Alex Luscombe

Alex Luscombe

PhD Candidate in Criminology

University of Toronto

About Me

Alex Luscombe is a fourth-year PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. His research interests include policing studies, institutional transparency and accountability, organizational networks, and computational social science. His research has been featured in numerous national and international news outlets, including BBC News, The Washington Post, Vice News, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, CBC News, Global News, CTV News, and The Montreal Gazette. He is a Researcher at the Centre for Access to Information and Justice and a Junior Fellow at Massey College.

Interests

  • Policing Studies
  • Institutional Transparency & Accountability
  • Network Analysis
  • Computational Social Science

Education

  • MA in Sociology, 2013

    Carleton University

  • BA (Hons) in Sociology, 2012

    University of Victoria

Recent Posts

Parsing your .pdfs in R

In my last blog post, we discussed how to read .pdf files into RStudio. Using pdftools, we were able to read in .pdfs that were both machine-ready and not.
Aug 10, 2020 7 min read R
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Publications

Race, Cannabis and the Canadian War on Drugs: An Examination of Cannabis Arrest Data by Race in Five Cities

The enforcement of drug laws in the United States has been heavily racialized. A substantial proportion of individuals arrested and prosecuted for drug possession in America are Black and Latino, despite similar rates of drug use across racial …
Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Alex Luscombe
Source Document DOI
Race, Cannabis and the Canadian War on Drugs: An Examination of Cannabis Arrest Data by Race in Five Cities

Freedom of Information Research and Cultural Studies: A Subterranean Affinity

Introducing the idea of subterranean affinity, this article explores how methodological use of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests can contribute to the field of cultural studies. Contributing to literatures on transparency and secrecy, we consider …
Kevin Walby, Alex Luscombe
Source Document DOI
Freedom of Information Research and Cultural Studies: A Subterranean Affinity

Police Foundation Governance and Accountability: Corporate Interlocks and Private, Nonprofit Influence on Public Police

Police foundations are new private organizations used by public police services to raise corporate monies in North America. This article examines problems of governance and accountability arising in relation to police foundations and police services. …
Kevin Walby, Randy K. Lippert, Alex Luscombe
Source Document DOI
Police Foundation Governance and Accountability: Corporate Interlocks and Private, Nonprofit Influence on Public Police
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