Ron Levi

Ron Levi is Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and the Department of Sociology, and is Distinguished Professor of Global Justice. He holds a courtesy cross-appointment to the Faculty of Law, and is a Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Ron works at the intersection of political sociology and the sociology of law. He studies two related questions: (1) responses to crime, violence, repression, and atrocities, through legal institutions, in collective memory, and across professional groups; and (2) how legal ideas are institutionally promoted across eras and political contexts, and how individuals and groups grapple with them. He directs the Global Justice Lab in the Munk School, which works with justice systems under stress.

In recent years, Ron has taught courses on events and turbulent times; police violence in global affairs; the sociology of atrocities; law, politics and globalization; justice measurement; and the sociology of law.

Ron has served as Secretary of the Law and Society Association, and as an elected Council Member for the Sociology of Law section of the American Sociological Association. He was made Chevalier in l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Government, is a recipient of the Ludwik and Estelle Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize, and has served as Scholar-in-Residence for Holocaust Education Week. In 2022, he received the Global Educator Award from the University of Toronto.