In 1968 the University of Ottawa’s Department of Criminology was founded to train correctional professionals. The ensuring decades have born witness to significant social, economic, political, and institutional upheavals; unsurprisingly criminality has evolved alongside as it endeavoured to “make sense” of our ever-changing world. The Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa has been at the very forefront of these disciplinary changes! Unsurprisingly, while one important thing remains the same – we are still the only bilingual criminology department in Canada – uOttawa’s Department of Criminology  is very different from what our founders envisioned fifty odd years ago.

I had the opportunity to witness many of these changes firsthand, initially as a student and then as a professor. I am confident that criminology at the University of Ottawa has never been better! We are a dynamic, engaged, and proudly interdisciplinary department. We are also a space for the kinds of discussions and debates that are the hallmark of the academy. Indeed, that the thirty-four full-time professors and more then twenty part-time professors do not agree on theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, or appropriate interventions is precisely our strength. In real terms, this means we are a vibrant department where students are exposed to a wide range of ideas, encouraged to develop critical thinking skills, and challenged to reflect on pressing social issues in new ways.