Short Bio

Professor Brannigan joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary in 1979 after completing doctoral training at the University of Toronto, and teaching for two years at the University of Western Ontario. While at Western, he joined a field study of the criminal courts in Peel County, Ontario. During his career he subsequently undertook studies of prostitution on the prairies for the Department of Justice, and conducted field work on the Rwandan genocide in Kigali and Arusha. He retired in 2012 but continues to work in the fields of criminology and social psychology.   His best known books include The Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries (Cambridge 1981), Crimes Courts and Corrections (Holt 1984), The Rise and Fall of Social Psychology (Aldine de Gruyter 2004), Beyond the Banality of Evil: Criminology and Genocide (Oxford 2013) and The Use and Misuse of the Experimental Method in Classical Social Psychology (Routledge 2012).

His most recent post is "Should Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment be retracted?" See Retraction Watch.