Public Seminar in Law and the Humanities
Ghost Criminology: Sites of Crime, Hauntings, and Motels
Date: April 13, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 12pm – 1pm
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Carolyn McKay (Associate Professor, The University of Sydney Law School)
Nothing is so alien, so bleak and unfriendly, as the strip of gas stations … and motels at the edge of your own city. (Philip K. Dick, 1959)
Drawing on my draft book manuscript, A Ghost Criminology of Motels: Art, Crime and the Hospitality Industry (Emerald Publishing), this talk explores the motel room as a site of crime and traumascape. My international criminal law research has found that motel rooms are common sites for mobile drug labs, assault, sexual offending and violence. Through their unique conflation of intimacy, privacy and anonymity with a world of transience, motor vehicles, strangers, sex, and the uncanny, motel rooms invite transgression. These spatial attributes are examined through ghost criminology (Fiddler et al., 2022), a conceptual framework that invokes the criminological imagination to sense the spectral traces of crime. The presentation also connects with the field of Hong Kong hauntology: Hong Kong’s haunted hotels, housing, and natural environments.
Dr Carolyn McKay is Associate Dean (Research Education) and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Law School. She is also a practicing visual artist, having completed postgraduate studies at Sydney College of the Arts. Her artworks engage with criminal justice issues, and recent works respond to criminal case law narratives regarding crimes in motels. She exhibited The Crime Scene Motel Project solo show at Scratch Art Space, Sydney, 2022 and Floating Between Couches & Motels solo light installation, Sydney Law School Library 2023-2024. Carolyn’s light and video installations, The APOD Solution and In the Palm of our Hands, were exhibited in BOUNDARIES: TRANSCENDED, 2024 at Watt Space, University of Newcastle, NSW. The APOD Solution was exhibited at the Sydney Law School Library 2025. The recipient of many awards, Carolyn has also been selected for residencies at Bundanon 2005, The Lock-Up 2009 and Nobby’s Lighthouse 2023. Her Crime Scene Motel Project exhibition received the 2023 ‘Non-Traditional Research Output Award’ from the Australian Legal Research Awards, a prestigious national scheme funded by the Council of Australian Law Deans. For full bio, visit https://www.carolynmckay.com/.
Chair: Shane Chalmers, Assistant Professor & Deputy Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law
To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=105859.
For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at / 3917 4727.