Albert Meehan

Professor of Sociology
447 Varner
(248) 370-2428
[email protected]

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

Policing, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis

Current Research

Co-Investigator* “Charting the "Reasonable Officer": A Partnership with Ontario's Special Investigations Unit to Understand Oversight in Police Use-of-Force Cases”  The Social Science Research Council of Canada $196,116 [AWARDED]  June 2021-June 2023.

*Co-Investigator with Patrick Watson (Wilfrid Laurier), Geoffrey T. Raymond, Waverly Duck & Kevin Whitehead (University of California, Santa Barbara) Jason Turowetz (University of Siegen-Germany). The project brings together researchers at four academic institutions, working with data provided by the Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to form research clusters with distinct but complementary focuses on police-citizen interactions and violence. 

Research Team Collaborator "Understanding Video Evidence in Criminal Trials for Police-Involved Shootings.” 2019-2022. Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, Patrick Watson (Principal Investigator) & Carrie Sanders (Co-Investigator), Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario CA) Department of Criminology.

Patrick Watson and Albert J. Meehan. "Two Modalities for Using Video in Analyses of On-Duty Police Violence" Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism. Dirk Von Lehm (Editor), Routledge. Forthcoming Fall 2020

Albert J. Meehan. Book Review: Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops tells us about Policing and Race by Frank R. Baumgartner, Derek Epp and Kelsey Straub. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. American Journal of Sociology vol.126 (1) July 2020.

Thomas W Lauer and Albert J. Meehan. “Closed Circuit Television Systems on University Campuses: Unexamined Implications for the Expectation of Privacy and Academic Freedom.” International Journal of Law and Public Administration. Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 1-9. December 2019.

A.J. Meehan “Egon Bittner and the Language Practices of the Police.” Ethnographic Studies. No.15/2018: 159-188, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1475806

Raymond Liedka, Albert J. Meehan and Thomas Lauer. “CCTV and Campus Crime: Challenging a Technological Fix” Criminal Justice Policy Review.  P. 1-23. September 2016. DOI: 10.1177/0887403416664947.

Courses Taught
SOC 100 Introduction to Sociology
SOC 240 Sociology of Crime and Punishment
SOC 327 Police and Society
SOC 420 Research and Policy Evaluation in Criminal Justice
SOC 430 Internship in Criminal Justice