Jianhong Liu Outstanding Paper Award 2025
Peng Wang
University of Hong Kong
Peng Wang is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He is an associate member of the Extra-legal Governance Institute at the University of Oxford, and he is an associate editor of Trends in Organized Crime. He holds a PhD in Law and an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from King’s College London. His research focuses on organized crime, corruption, economic sociology, institutional economics, police and policing, informal institutions, and China studies.
He is the author of The Chinese Mafia: Organized Crime, Corruption, and Extra-legal Protection (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is also the author of Extralegal Governance: The Social Order of Illegal Markets in China (coauthored with Wanlin Lin, Cambridge University Press, 2025).
Since joining HKU in summer 2014, Peng has published nine articles in The British Journal of Criminology, one of world’s top criminology journals, and five articles in The China Quarterly, the world’s leading China Studies journal. Other works appeared in journals such as World Development, Comparative Education, The Sociological Review, Urban History, Journal of Criminology, Journal of Contemporary China, Research Ethics, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, The RUSI Journal, Trends in Organized Crime, and Global Crime.
Jianhong Liu Outstanding Paper Award 2025
Wanlin Lin
Sun Yat-sen University
Wanlin Lin is an associate professor at the School of Law at Sun Yat-sen University. Her research interests include governance, law and economics, and the institutional analysis and transition in China. Her current research focuses on informal property rights, extralegal markets, online and crypto marketplaces, and innovation governance, examining the interaction between formal and informal institutions and their influence on institutional change in China. She obtained her PhD in political economy from King’s College London. She is also a research fellow at the International Centre for China Development Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Her scholarly publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as World Development, Journal of Institutional Economics, Public Choice, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. She is also a co-author of Extralegal Governance: The Social Order of Illegal Markets in China (Cambridge University Press) with Peng Wang.
Steven F. Messner Outstanding Book Award 2025
Jianghong Liu
Macau University of Science and Technology
Jianhong Liu is a Guest Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Law at Macau University and Macau University of Science and Technology. Prof Liu has authored and co-authored more than 225 academic publications, including 31 books and more than 100 SSCI or Scopus articles. He has won many awards, including 2025 “Sellin & Glueck Award” of the American Society of Criminology, 2016 “Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award” from the International Division of the American Society of Criminology, and 2018 “G. O.W. Mueller Award for Distinguished Scholar” of the International Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. His co-authored book has won the 2022 “Distinguished Book Award” from the Asian Criminological Society and the 2022 “Best Scholarly Publication Award from The Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences In the United States (ACPSS).” “Asian Criminological Society (ACS) Distinguished Book Award 2025”; and “Distinguished Service to ACS Award (2025)”
Professor Liu has served in numerous leadership roles in international academic organizations. He was the Elected Founding President and Honorary President of the Asian Criminological Society (2009 – 2015); he has been the Elected President of the Scientific Commission of the International Society for Criminology (since 2014), the Elected Chairman of the General Assembly of the Asian Criminological Society (since 2016), and a member of the Steering Committee of Campbell Collaboration’s Crime and Justice Group (since 2009); and the elected President of Macau Society of Criminology etc.
Professor Liu has actively served the academic profession. Prof Liu is the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Criminology (SSCI Q2). He is the editor of “The Springer Series on Asian Criminology & Criminal Justice Research”. He is also a member of the editorial boards of more than 20 international academic journals, including the British Journal of Criminology, Journal of Experimental Criminology, etc. He has been appointed to take many prestigious roles, such as serving as an Expert Nominator for the Stockholm Prize in Criminology appointed by the Stockholm Prize in Criminology Foundation, a Grant Reviewer for the European Research Council, a Council member of the World Economic Forum for the Global Agenda Council; Advisor of UNODC Centre of Excellence for Statistics on Crime and Criminal Justice in Asia and the Pacific; Senior Advisor of Chinese Society of Criminology, etc. Professor Liu has been appointed by numerous prominent universities and research institutes as an honorary professor or research fellow. He has give three seminars at Oxford University in October 2025, and a keynote as Asian Criminological Society’s 16th Annual Conference (2025) in Brisbane.
Steven F. Messner Outstanding Book Award 2025
Bin Liang
Oklahoma State University-Tulsa
Bin Liang (Ph.D./J.D.) is a Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. His research interests include globalization and its impact on the Chinese legal system, crime and deviance in China, and comparative studies in criminology and criminal justice. He is the author of five books, including The Changing Chinese Legal System, 1978 – Present: Centralization of Power and Rationalization of the Legal System (2008) with Routledge, China’s Drug Practices and Policies: Regulating Controlled Substances in a Global Context (2009, coauthored) with Ashgate, Jurisprudence (2012, co-edited, in Chinese) with Renmin University of China Press, The Death Penalty in China: Policy, Practice and Reform (2016, co-edited) with Columbia University Press, and Chinese Netizens’ Opinions on Death Sentences: An Empirical Examination (2021, coauthored) with University of Michigan Press.
Steven F. Messner Outstanding Book Award 2025
Amy Adamczyk
City University of New York
Dr. Amy Adamczyk is a Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research focuses on how different contexts—including nations, counties, and friendship groups—as well as personal religious beliefs, shape people’s deviant, criminal, and health-related attitudes and behaviors.
She is the author of Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion (Oxford University Press, 2025), which investigates why attitudes about abortion vary so dramatically across countries and cultures. She is also the coauthor of Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation, a finalist for Christianity Today’s 2022 Book of the Year Award (Marriage and Family Category), and the author of Cross-National Public Opinion about Homosexuality: Examining Attitudes across the Globe, which received the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the International Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Dr. Adamczyk has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles. Her work has been featured in major media outlets including CNN, BBC, NPR, ABC, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, PBS, The Huffington Post, Journey TV, The Muslim Times, and The Christian Century.
Ivan Sun Outstanding Young Scholar Research Award
Dr. Shuai Wei
University of Southampton
Dr. Shuai Wei is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Southampton. His expertise lies in gender and crime in China from an international and comparative perspective, as well as the sociology of gender. He has been a Fellow of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Hong Kong since 2022 and has published widely in scholarly journals, including the British Journal of Criminology, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Feminist Criminology, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, and International Review for the Sociology of Sport. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2021.
Dr. Xinting Wang
Henan University
Xinting Wang (Ph.D., Sam Houston State University) is an Associate Professor in the School of Law at Henan University. She assumed the position of tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Ball State University from August 2021 to May 2025. Her research focuses on policing, crime control and reduction, juvenile delinquency, and comparative studies using quantitative methods. She has conducted research in Mainland China, Taiwan, and the United States, exploring topics such as police decision-making, juvenile justice, public perceptions of crime, and the social dynamics that shape police–community relations. She also developed an interest in geo-spatial analysis and machine learning in criminal justice and criminology in the past few years. Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Family Violence, Crime and Delinquency, Policing: An International Journal, Criminal Justice and Behavior, International Journal of Crime, Law and Justice, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Studies, Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, and International Criminal Justice Review.
President’s Service Award
Professor Hong Lu
University of Nevada
Hong Lu is professor of the Criminal Justice Department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her areas of interest include comparative criminology, court and sentencing, the death penalty and sociology of law. More recently, she has been working on projects involving wrongful convictions. Professor Lu coauthored academic books (Punishment by Cambridge University Press, 2005; China’s Death Penalty: History, Law and Contemporary Practices by Routledge, 2007; China’s Drug Practices and Policies by Ashgate, 2009), coedited books (Jurisprudence by Renmin University Press, 2002; China’s Death Penalty by Columbia University Press, 2015), and coedited special issues for Journals (J of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2010 and 2026; Asian Journal of Criminology, 2011). She also published dozens of journal articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries in some of the top-tiered journals (Law and Society Review, British Journal of Criminology, China Quarterly, Justice Quarterly, and Asian Journal of Criminology). Professor Lu was a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, and was a recipient of the Barrick Scholar Award for the Outstanding Faculty Researcher at UNLV. She is a life member of ACCCJ and served as ACCCJ’s President in 2022-2024.
Honorable Mention: Dr. Chenghui Zhang
University of Nevada
Dr. Chenghui Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She specializes in bias crimes, racial/ethnic inequalities, and quantitative methods. Her research explores how social structure influences crime and crime reporting behaviors, with a specific focus on how social inequalities affect perceptions of and reactions to bias crimes. Dr. Zhang joined ACCCJ in 2019 and served as the Treasurer from 2022 to 2024.
Honorable Mention: Dr. Shuai Wei
University of Southampton
Dr. Shuai Wei is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Southampton. His expertise lies in gender and crime in China from an international and comparative perspective, as well as the sociology of gender. He has been a Fellow of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Hong Kong since 2022 and has published widely in scholarly journals, including the British Journal of Criminology, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Feminist Criminology, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, and International Review for the Sociology of Sport. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2021.
Shanhe Jiang Outstanding Student Paper Award
Bo Zhang
Bangor University
Bo Zhang is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the School of History, Law and Social Sciences at Bangor University. His thesis explores the impact of anti-Chinese hate crime victim experience on British society after the COVID-19 pandemic. His research interests include narrative criminology, victim experience and policing, and his work has been published in academic journals, such as Victims & Offenders, Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. He was a recipient of awards, such as the 11th Fellowship Programme for Graduate Thesis on Chinese Anthropology Fieldwork, the Wales Taith Programme, the Vice-Chancellor Scholarship of Bangor University.
ACCCJ Student Travel Award
Guyu Sun
University of Maryland
Guyu Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, where she also earned her MA in 2025. She received her BSocSc in Sociology (Honors) from the University of Macau in 2022. Her research examines inequalities in punishment and their collateral consequences, with a particular focus on the experiences of children and adolescents and the roles of peers, parents, teachers, and school contexts. She is also interested in labeling theories and the role of stigma and labeling in different contexts. Her ongoing dissertation examines punishment avoidance in school disciplinary processes. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Crime & Delinquency, Policing and Society, and Asian Journal of Criminology.
Stephanie Ha
University of Delaware
Stephanie Ha is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Delaware. She received her M.A. in Sociology at the University of Delaware and her B.A. with Honors in Sociology at the University of Washington. Stephanie’s dissertation focuses on the relationship between race and the contemporary criminalization of protest. Her broader research interests include policing, criminology, race and ethnicity, and inequality.
Yi-Syuan (Ethan) Jian
University of Delaware
Yi-Syuan (Ethan) Jian is a third-year doctoral student and graduate research assistant with the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on understanding police officers’ decision-making processes and how their attitudes and behaviors influence policing outcomes for both citizens and communities. He is also interested in Cybercrime, Evidence-based crime policy, and Substance use. His current research investigates officers’ perceptions of individuals with mental disorders and the factors that shape policing outcomes for this population.