Dr. Kelly Struthers Montford

The core objective of my research is the study of human and non-human captivity, specifically the technologies and logics shaping these confinements, whether that be in locations of prisons, animal agriculture, or abattoirs, and in some instances, how these overlap materially. This overlap is borne out in cases of prison-based animal agriculture and slaughter programs, prison-based canine training programs, prison-based zoo partnerships, the fact that prison building often destroys the habitats of free-living animals, leading to their decline or death, and the general operation of prisons which are positively correlated with increased greenhouse gas emissions and that prison effluents poison surrounding lands and waters making life impossible for nonhuman animal life.

Prior to joining Toronto Metropolitan University, I was a tenure-track professor at University of British Columbia Okanagan. From 2016 to 2019 I was a postdoctoral fellow in Punishment, Law, and Social Theory at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto where my work included civil liberties cases on solitary confinement in Canada, research projects examining the links between child welfare apprehensions and the criminalization of Indigenous women, the SSHRC-funded Prisons Transparency Project, and various work on risk assessment, gender, and race. I have previously worked as the Senior Advisor to the Independent Expert on Human Rights and Corrections for the Province of Ontario. Most recently I served as a subject matter consultant to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as an expert witness on human rights, prison food, solitary confinement and use of force, and continue to serve as a volunteer member of a prisoner-initiated reintegration group for men serving life sentences.

I hold an Honour’s Bachelors of Social Sciences with a Specialization in Criminology from the University of Ottawa, as well as a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Alberta where I focused on feminist criminology. My PhD in Sociology was obtained from the University of Alberta where my research focused on socio-legal studies and critical theory. I held multiple awards during my graduate career, including the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, the SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, and was named the 2013-2014 Institute for Critical Animal Studies Hilda Scholar of the year. I am the co-founder of the Canadian Society for Critical Animal Studies.

I am the co-author of the forthcoming Animals and the Prison Industrial Complex: Political and Ethical Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan 2026), and co-editor of Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (Routledge 2020), Disability and Animality: Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (Routledge 2020), and Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice (Routledge 2021). My work has been published in Oxford Intersections, Law & Social Inquiry, Social & Legal Studies, Aggression and Violent Behavior, the Journal of Food Law and Policy, Radical Philosophy Review, the New Criminal Law Review, philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism, the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, Societies, and the PhaenEx Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, as well as in various edited collections.

Research Interests

Critical prison studies, green criminology, feminist criminology, critical animal studies, continental philosophy, social theory, Anthropocene studies, socio-legal studies, restorative justice, transformative justice, prisoner writing

My next research focus is a monograph The Prison’s Animals, an examination of the varying and fraught relationships incarceration constitutes and prescribes for the humans and more-than-humans involved, including the building of prisons on toxic lands, prison-based animal agriculture and slaughter, animal-based prison diets and political prisoners, prison zoo programs, the use of new risk assessment tools intending to predict future harm to nonhuman animals, and the imbricated gender, racial, and specied politics of prison dog programs.