Welcome to our third 2025-26 Visiting Fellow,  Dr Avi Boukli, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Southampton

Dr Avi Boukli is Associate Professor of Criminology at the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Southampton. Dr Boukli has first come to DISC in 2024, to participate in a roundtable on Digital Harms and since then has collaborated extensively with DISC members. During their visit, Dr Boukli will be  working with Jessica Elias and Adi Kuntsman on AI harms and policy interventions. 

Dr Boukli is a socio-legal scholar specialising in zemiology, international criminal law, and social and legal inequalities. Their work examines issues including AI-driven inequalities, border and colonial harms, gendered violence, hate crime against queer communities, environmental harm, and human trafficking. Avi is the author of Zemiology and Human Trafficking (Routledge, 2024), co-editor of Zemiology: Reconnecting Crime and Harm (Palgrave, 2018), and has published in leading journals, including Criminology & Criminal Justice and Critical Criminology.

Their research on harms experienced by LGBT trafficking survivors has been cited by the UNODC and their extensive media experience includes the BBC documentary series Why Slavery? Avi is currently Co-Investigator on the Leverhulme-funded project Ageing LGBTQ Lives in the UK and Italy. They have held research and teaching posts at LSE, Birkbeck, Teesside University, and the Open University, and received the University of Southampton Students’ Union Most Engaging Lecturer award in 2026.