Dr. João Velloso is a Faculty member at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, Vice-Dean, Graduate Studies in Law and an Associate Professor within the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa.
Dr. João Velloso has a multidisciplinary background by training: law, criminology, sociolegal studies, anthropology, sociology, political science and communication. He works in the areas of criminal law and sentencing law, immigration law, criminology, and sociolegal studies with a focus on the judicialization of social problems and the governance of security through the intersections between criminal law and administrative law. His research deals with penalization of protesters, political dissidence and migrants; access to justice in detention and carceral transparency; regulation of cannabis, harm reduction and drug policy; and deliberalization of democracies, judicial independence and on academic freedom in the Americas. As part of his research agenda, he examines the (ab)uses of risk assessments and surveillance tools, and other technological infrastructures in criminal law and administrative law-based regimes.
He is a member of the Board of directors of the Canadian Law & Society Association since 2017, also acting as CLSA-ACDS Vice-President Conference (2023-26), and is the managing editor of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (2026-…). Dr. Velloso is the founding chair of the Working Group “Judicialization of Social Problems” of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Sociology of Law, being also a member of the Board of directors of the RCSL (2021-…). He participates(ed) in various research networks and projects, such as: Observatory on Profiling, Prison Transparency Project, Observatory on Violence, Criminalization & Democracy in Latin America, Canadian Partnership for International Justice, Access to Law and Access to Justice, Justice Americas, Ottawa Hub for Reduction Network, the Coalition for Academic Freedom in the Americas, and the National Institute in Science and Technology on Comparative Studies in Administration of Conflicts (INCT-InEAC, Brazil).
Dr. João Velloso supervises and publishes in the areas of criminal law and penology, immigration law, socio-legal studies, drug policy, penalization or protesters, legal education and internationalization, access to justice, social control and surveillance, and deliberalization of democracies. Among many journals, he had published in Punishment & Society, Revue Criminologie, Canadian Journal of Law and Society – Revue canadienne droit et société, Oñati Socio-Legal Series, Revista Brasileira de Ciências Criminais. He also contributes to the edition of the Canadian Yearbook of Human Rights (ongoing) and had published chapters in many organized collections.
He currently conducts scholarly activities in four languages: English, French, Portuguese (native), and Spanish; and has passive knowledge of Italian.