Our team
The team at the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism brings together interdisciplinary perspectives in Criminology, Communication, Education, Political Economy, and Psychology to further scholarship and praxis around hate, bias and extremism. Each team member has a history of collaboration in both scholarship and service initiatives around inclusivity and social justice.
Dr. Barbara Perry is a recognized global authority on hate crime, and the primary national authority on right-wing extremism in Canada. She is the current and founding Co-Chair of the International Network for Hate Studies. She is a well-known expert among media outlets including The Agenda, CBC, The Current, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. Dr. Perry is a regular consultant with Justice Canada, Public Safety Canada, The RCMP, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and with local social justice organizations.
Her work extends to policing diverse communities, building resilience among marginalized communities, and broadly, issues of diversity and justice. Dr. Perry is helping to frame the field, and foster global education and support for victims of violence.
Research interests include:
- hate crime
- right-wing extremism
- policing diversity
- Islamophobia
- antisemitism
- homophobia and transphobia
The Centre will be a magnet for high-quality academics who will contribute to the intellectual climate, locally and internationally. It will send a powerful message about our values while enabling the university to build its research capacity, share new knowledge and become the go-to source for policy developers seeking data, guidance and advice.
Brad Galloway is the Coordinator at the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism. Brad brings a wealth of experience from his work in the countering and preventing violent extremism and terrorism space, and his more recent work in intervention and case management with NGO's such as Life After Hate. He conducts consultancy work centred around the Evolve program at the Organization for the Prevention of Violence (OPV). He also worked as a Research Assistant on a number of projects that are currently funded by Public Safety Canada and the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS). Moreover, Brad has served as a consultant for Google, Moonshot CVE, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), among others. His primary research interests include right-wing extremism and terrorism, preventing and countering violent extremism, and the roles of former extremists in combating violent extremism.
This position was made possible by the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism's recent partnership with Meta Canada.
Dr. Tanner Mirrlees
Associate Professor
Undergraduate Program Director
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Dr. Mirrlees conducts research on the convergence of right-wing extremism and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. He interrogates the ways that right-wing extremist organizations use social media platforms, the technological affordances of these platforms to extremists, and the threat that platforms of hate pose to the values of a multicultural, democratic and socially just world.
Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos
Steering Committee Member
Associate Teaching Professor,
Criminology and Justice
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos holds a Master of Arts (Sociology) and Doctor of Philosophy from York University (Sociology). Her research interests focus on child and youth-based caregiving (young carers), unpaid family caregiving and long-term care (LTC). She is also a leading advocate for LTC residents in Ontario and has provided over 300 expert interviews throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Her current research focuses on systemic abuse and negligence in the broader LTC sector.
Dr. Jennifer Laffier
Assistant Professor
Mitch and Leslie Frazer Faculty of Education
Dr. Laffier's research and work are focused on addressing issues of bullying; specifically, she works to support victims of bullying with therapeutic approaches and to build and implement programs in schools across Canada that address and counter the social problem of bullying.
Dr. Scott Aquanno
Associate Professor
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Dr. Aquanno's research focuses on the economics of social exclusion with emphasis on the political and institutional impact of neoliberal globalization. His recent work looks at the organizational, participatory and programmatic foundations of inclusive, anti-oppressive community development policy.
Dr. Kanika Samuels Wortley
Associate Professor
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Kanika Samuels-Wortley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology and Justice at Ontario Tech University. Her research explores the intersection of race, racism and the criminal justice system by centring Black and racialized peoples experiences with victimization and crime. Dr. Samuels-Wortley research has been published in numerous prestigious national and international academic journals. She has co-authored several provincial and federal reports for the Ministry of Children, Community, and Social Services, and the Privy Council Office and has presented her research on systemic racism in policing in both provincial and federal inquiries including the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and the Mass Casualty Commission. Furthermore, her research has been featured as well as quoted in numerous national news reports, podcasts, blogposts, and literary journals.
Dr. Sanaa Alwidian
Steering Committee Member
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science
Sanaa Alwidian is an Assistant Professor of Software Engineering at the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering at Ontario Tech University. Her research interests are in the areas of Human-centric Software and Requirements Engineering, where she focuses on humanrelated aspects while planning and designing software systems to avoid intentional and nonintentional bias and discrimination against users. She is also interested in Software Evolution and Analysis, AI-enabled Model-based System Engineering, Mobile Ad hoc Networks, and Natural Language Processing. Her work has been published in top peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
Prior to joining Ontario Tech University, Sanaa worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the GEODES Software Engineering Research Lab at the Université de Montréal. From 2015 to 2020, she worked as a research and a teaching assistant at the University of Ottawa, and as a researcher with the CyberJustice lab at the Université de Montréal. Sanaa holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa (2020), an M.Sc. degree in Computer Science and a B.Sc. degree in Computer Information Systems from Jordan University of Science and Technology. From 2014-2019, Sanaa had been a recipient of the prestigious Ontario Trillium Scholarship (OTS), awarded to the best international doctoral students from around the world (with a first-class average and excellent academic record) to study in Ontarian universities. She had also received the International Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), the University of Ottawa Excellence Scholarship, the International Doctoral Scholarship, the BMO Financial Group Scholarship, and the Scientific Research Scholarship/Jordan.
Dr. Karla Dhungana Sainju
Associate Professor
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Dr. Karla Dhungana Sainju is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice at Ontario Tech University. She is currently serving as the chair for the Women in Research Council to develop and implement initiatives to invest in gender equity at Ontario Tech. Her research focuses on corrections and community corrections, including the use of electronic monitoring for pretrial and post-conviction supervision, alternatives to incarceration, women in the criminal justice system, and justice-involved veterans. She also engages in research on traditional and cyberbullying, which includes macro and micro-level influences on bullying, bullying roles, xenophobic and race-based bullying, and big data and social media.
Prior to joining Ontario Tech University, she was a Senior Research Associate for the Public Safety Performance Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, D.C. She conducted research on state criminal justice policy and was responsible for the project’s adult corrections and sentencing research portfolio. She has completed a Congressional Fellowship on Women and Public Policy in the United States House of Representatives, where she handled a legislative issue portfolio covering judiciary, women’s issues, and child exploitation interdiction. While earning her Ph.D. she also worked as a researcher at the Florida State University Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research.
