Green College is pleased to welcome Dr Simon A Cole, professor of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine, and co-editor of the National Registry of Exonerations. He is the first Cecil H and Ida Green visiting professor at Green College for the 2025-26 academic year.

His research focuses on science and technology in the criminal legal system, particularly forensic science. He is the author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification (Harvard University Press, 2001), which was awarded the 2003 Rachel Carson Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science, and a co-author of Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting (University of Chicago Press, 2008, with Michael Lynch, Ruth McNally & Kathleen Jordan).

Dr Cole will be speaking at the college on Thursday, October 9 at 5:00 pm in the Coach House, giving a talk titled "Is Medico-legal Death Investigation Really Five Times Worse in Canada than in the United States? Exoneration Registries in Comparative Perspective." To learn more about this event, visit the event page.

Dr Cole is in residence at Green College for two weeks in early October 2025.