Dr. Marta-Marika Urbanik

Dr. Marta-Marika Urbanik
University of Alberta

Email: urbanik@ualberta.ca

I am an urban ethnographer, specializing in gangs and neighbourhood redevelopment in the Canadian context. My research interests include issues pertaining to gangs and gang violence (in neighbourhoods and in prison), the effects of neighbourhood redevelopment on criminal processes, neighbourhood 'beefs' and violence, the street code on social media, police-minority relations, and research methods.

I completed my Ph.D in the Department of Sociology, with a specialization in criminology, here at the University of Alberta .My doctoral research analyzed the effects of neighbourhood revitalization on gangs, criminal structures, and violence within Canada's oldest and largest social housing project (Regent Park).My doctoral work received multiple awards, including the Social Science and Humanities Research Council's (SSHRC) Joseph-Armand Bombardier award, the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship (the most prestigious award at the University of Alberta), the Dorothy J. Killam Award, and the University of Alberta's President's Doctoral Prize of Distinction, among others. I completed my Masters degree at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

I am also the Book Review Editor of Canada's flagship sociology journal, The Canadian Journal of Sociology 

I routinely present my research at national and international conferences, including at venues of the American Society for Criminology (Washington, Atlanta, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Fransisco), the Western Society of Criminology (Hawaii), Canadian Sociological Association (Calgary), the American Sociological Association (Montreal), the Eurogang Network (Sweden, Netherlands), the Surveillance Studies Network (Barcelona), and the Canada Research Ethics Board meeting (Toronto). In addition, I have been an invited speaker at the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary.

My work is published in the British Journal of Criminology, Qualitative Sociology, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment (Wiley), and Using Ethnography in Criminology (Springer).