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Department of Sociology

Tamara Humphrey

Profile photo of Tamara Humphrey

Associate Professor, Social Justice Studies Director

Sociology

Contact:
Office: COR A357 250-472-4722
Credentials:
PhD (U of Calgary)
Area of expertise:
Criminology, critical criminology, theories of crime, quantitative methods

Tamara Humphrey (she/her) is a white settler who resides on the traditional territories of the T’Souke and is of Scottish, Norwegian, Welsh, English and French heritage. She is a critical criminologist, a community-engaged researcher, and an advocate for people who are currently and formerly incarcerated. Using a diverse range of qualitative and quantitative methods, her research to date has focused on both the systems that criminalize people and how early experiences of multiple adversities, including familial and peer victimization, are related to later interactions with the justice system. Her current scholarly and social justice advocacy work seeks to draw attention to the pains of imprisonment, and the myriad of systemic causes related to the poor outcomes of criminalization and incarceration in Canada. A central focus of Dr. Humphrey’s work is on the barriers to re-entry that individuals and their support systems face when they are released from prison. This work centers collaboration, relationships, and capacity building with current and formerly incarcerated people, and focuses on lived experience to enact sustainable social change for communities and people impacted by crime and incarceration.

She is co-director of CRPOI, the Centre for Research into the Processes, Outcomes and Impacts of Incarceration - a national research centre and community focused on action-oriented critical research addressing the impacts of incarceration in Canada. She is also a member of the Critical Perspectives National Steering Committee, a committee that provides oversight to the annual Critical Perspectives in Interdisciplinary Justice Studies annual meeting – the only national criminology and justice-related Canadian conference. She, along with an interdisciplinary team of academics, advocates, members of NGOs, and people with lived experience of incarceration hosted the most recent annual meeting, Transforming Justice, in May 2025 at the University of Victoria.

Interests

  • Community-engaged research
  • Critical and feminist criminology
  • Sociology of Punishment
  • Re-entry and reintegration
  • Abolition
  • Life-course criminology
  • Quantitative and qualitative methods

Publications

Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin and Tamara Humphrey. 2022. Pathways to Ruin? High-Risk Offending over the Life-Course. University of Toronto Press.

Humphrey, Tamara and Tracy Vaillancourt. 2021. "Longitudinal relations between hypercompetitiveness, jealousy and aggression across adolescence." Merrill Palmer Quarterly, 67(3), 237–268.

Humphrey, Tamara and Tracy Vaillancourt. 2020. "Longitudinal relations between bullying, sexual harassment, homophobic taunting and dating violence: evidence of heterotypic continuity." Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49(10), 1976-1986.

Humphrey, Tamara and Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot. 2018. "Accumulating (dis)advantage: do social bonds mediate the relationship between multiple childhood adversities and persistent offending?" Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, 4(3), 297 – 321.

Humphrey, Tamara and Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot. 2017. "Measurement matters: offense types and specialization." Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Goodbrand, Pernille, Humphrey Tamara and Jyoti Gondek. 2017. "Relatives or rentals? Secondary suites in Calgary through a multigenerational family lens." The Canadian Geographer, 61(4), 525 – 539.

Humphrey, Tamara and Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot. 2015. "Post-sentencing supervision: punishment and/or protection?" International Criminal Justice Review, 25, 379 – 401.

Humphrey, Tamara. 2021. "Deviance Management: Insiders, Outsiders, Hiders and Drifters." Contemporary Sociology, 50(3), 211-213.

Benavides, Sebastien, Fanny Oliphant, Veronica Chirino, Jeff Halvorsen, Tamara Humphrey and Liza Lorenzetti. 2022, January. Latino men’s well-being community support group. Calgary, AB: Alberta Men’s Network/ University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work.

Humphrey, Tamara. 2017. Research Report: Results from the Calgary Police Service 2017 Workforce Census. Prepared for the Calgary Police Service, Calgary, Alberta. This report received media attention from a number of news outlets in Calgary, including the Calgary Herald and 660 News.

Humphrey, Tamara. 2017. Coordinating Along the Service Spectrum and the Innovative System Response Project Coordinated Action Framework. Prepared for the Calgary Domestic Violence Collective (CDVC) and the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter (CWES), Calgary, Alberta.

Humphrey, Tamara. 2017. Legal Services Systems Map. Prepared for the Legal Services Advisory Group of the Calgary Domestic Violence Collective (the CDVC), Calgary, Alberta.