CrimSL welcomes new postdoctoral fellow Dr. Muhammad Asif!
Dr. Asif joins us for the 2024-2025 academic year and will be co-supervised at CrimSL by Professors Matthew Light and Beatrice Jauregui. His research project is entitled "Vigilantism in Canada: An experimental study of vigilante pedophile hunter groups" and focuses on two main objectives: 1) To examine whether Canadian citizens lack trust in the police and resultantly support vigilante groups more than they trust the police in Canada; and 2) To investigate whether Canadian citizens feel sympathy for the vigilantes or for the victims of these vigilante groups, some of whom sometimes lose their lives after their shaming videos are posted on public forums.
He earned his PhD from the University of Amsterdam, specializing in vigilantism, lynching, and police legitimacy. During his doctoral studies, he was a PhD exchange student at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Washington University in St. Louis, United States.
He has received several scholarships and fellowships, including a fully funded PhD scholarship, and a fellowship from the International Development Research Centre of Canada during his two-year MPhil.
Asif has published numerous research articles in prestigious journals such as The British Journal of Criminology, Theoretical Criminology, and the European Journal of Criminology. Recently, "Legitimacy of the courts: evidence from a survey in Punjab, Pakistan," which he co-authored, was published by the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice.
Asif was recently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Bahauddin Zakariya University, Pakistan.
Please join us in welcoming Asif!