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Professor Sida Liu received his LL.B. degree from Peking University Law School and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto in 2016 while also holding a non-budgetary cross-appointment at the Faculty of Law. His teaching focuses on sociology and law, previously having taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Liu's research interests span sociology of law, organizations, professions, criminal justice, globalization, and social theory. He has conducted extensive empirical research on China’s legal reform, the legal profession, the globalization of corporate law firms, and political mobilization among criminal defense lawyers. His ongoing project examines China’s influence on legal professions in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In addition to empirical work, Liu writes on sociolegal theory and general social theory, drawing particularly from the tradition of Georg Simmel and the Chicago School of sociology. He is the author of books in Chinese and English, including "Criminal Defense in China: Politics and Lawyers' Work" (with Terence C. Halliday, Cambridge University Press, 2016), and has published numerous articles in leading law and social science journals like the American Journal of Sociology and the Law & Society Review.
Department of Sociology