Profile
Dr. Muhammad Zain ul Abidin is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Sargodha, Pakistan. He earned his PhD in Criminology from Universiti Sains Malaysia (2026), where his doctoral research looked at policing and marginalized communities. He also holds an MPhil in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Minhaj University Lahore and an MSc in Criminology from the University of Sargodha, where he won the gold medal for academic performance.
His research centers on police–community relations, institutional trust and betrayal, procedural justice, and crime prevention, from a Global South perspective. He specializes in qualitative and interpretive methods, especially Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, narrative inquiry, and participatory visual methods such as photovoice. His work on transgender–police relations, institutional betrayal, and policing as a structural determinant of health appears in the Asian Journal of Criminology, Policing and Society, and the International Journal of Transgender Health. He has also published on climate-responsive policing, juvenile delinquency, and the criminalization of marginalized groups.
He teaches policing, victimology, crime prevention, community policing, probation and parole, and criminal justice reform. He has presented his research at conferences in Pakistan, Malaysia, and the United States.
Before joining academia, he spent about fifteen years in the Punjab Police (from 2004). He served as an investigating officer, convener of the police–public community policing committee, and editor of a police journal. This field experience grounds his scholarship in how police institutions actually work.
