Nicolas Sallée is an associate professor at the University of Montreal’s Department of Sociology. He is also director of the Montreal research centre on social inequalities and discrimination.

His research are how populations who are judges as deviant or non-conforming are categorized, evaluated, and treated in contemporary societies. He has been studying for 15 years practices of treatment of young delinquents in France and in Quebec in environments (prisons, closed centres, etc.) and open environments (probation, surveillance in collectivity, etc.) His work document the increasing pre-eminence of control logic with varying intensities in different countries fragilise rehabilitation goals in the youth justice system.

He is interested in other research projects, the medical and legal follow up of people non criminally responsible for mental health disorders and the penal regulation of sexuality and the judicial treatment of sexual harassment, particularly incest. Since April 2021, he has started a new project funded by the CRSH on social reactions to non-conforming gender norms during childhood in France and in Quebec and more generally in North America.

Finally, he interested in the epistemology of social science, in the questions of their use and their relevance, their bonds between similar fields, in particular psychology and psychic sciences.