Ron Levi holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies and serves as Associate Director, Academic at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. He is a faculty member in both the Munk School and the Department of Sociology, and a Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Trained in law and sociology, Ron focuses his research on the legal and political dimensions of how we respond to crime and violence. His work takes a global perspective, investigating both urban crime prevention strategies and responses to mass violence and atrocities. In his current projects he is examining organizational strategies in the fields of international criminal law and human rights, and conducting collaborative research that addresses complex puzzles in counter-terrorism with empirical lessons from criminology.

A former Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Ron has served in a range of academic leadership positions at the University of Toronto, where he has directed undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs.

Ron attended law school at McGill University, where he was trained in both civil and common law. After completing his master’s in law at the University of Toronto, he pursued graduate studies in sociology at Northwestern University and then completed his doctoral dissertation in law at U of T, where he was awarded the Alan Marks medal. He received the Ludwik and Estelle Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize in 2014, and his teaching at U of T has been recognized with an undergraduate teaching award for Teaching Excellence.