Biography
I joined Â鶹ÉçÇø in September 2016 as a Lecturer in Criminology. Before joining the University, I completed a PhD in Criminology at the University of Edinburgh; during this time I worked as a university tutor and provided part-time research and event support to Lothian and Borders Community Justice Authority. My first degree was in architectural history, and I still have an interest in structures (whether abstract institutional structures or real-world buildings).
I am primarily a researcher of (as well as in) Scotland, but with a comparative and international perspective. I am interested in how the specific post-devolutionary context and ongoing manoeuvrings around Scottish independence and Brexit have shaped Scottish approaches to criminal justice. My PhD (supervised by Prof Richard Sparks and Dr Richard Jones) examined the reforms to community penalties in Scotland under the 2016 Community Justice (Scotland) Act, drawing on Bourdieusian social theory and scholarship on the sociology of punishment and local partnership working. I remain interested in these areas and have continued to write and publish on community justice in Scotland, with several articles drawing on and building on this research and Scottish justice policy more generally. I am currently guest-editing (with colleagues at Strathclyde) a special issue of the British Journal of Community Justice on ‘Community Justice in Scotland’.
I have collaborated with colleagues at ENU and elsewhere on researching restorative justice, particularly from a policy perspective; our work has informed Scotland’s restorative justice policies. From 2020 to 2022, I led an ESRC-funded project looking at the impact of Covid-19 on local interagency partnership working. From 2022 to 2025, I worked with two ENU colleagues to write an undergraduate textbook on Criminal Justice in Scotland, scheduled to be published by Routledge in August 2025.
I am a regular peer reviewer for journals and contribute to national and international conferences. I was invited to join the organising committee for the British Â鶹ÉçÇø of Criminology 2024 conference at the University of Strathclyde – the largest such conference to date.
I contribute to Scottish justice policy debates through my membership of Community Justice Scotland’s Expert Advisory Group (formerly Academic Advisory Group) and my role on the Edinburgh branch committee of the Scottish Association for the Study of Offending (SASO); I have appeared on BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Good Morning Scotland’.
I am a Fellow of Advance HE (since 2018) and have taught on a wide range of modules across all stages of undergraduate and postgraduate study in criminology, social sciences and social work. Since 2020, I have been Module Leader for a core second-year Criminology module (Youth, Crime and Deviance) and the core final-year Honours Project modules. I have served as External Examiner for De Montfort University (2019-23) during the challenging period of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2018 I have been involved in promoting academic integrity at ENU and currently serve as Senior Academic Integrity Officer for the School of Applied Sciences. In 2024 I became Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Criminology at ENU.