I am a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, where I joined the Law School in December 2024. My research to date has focused on long-term imprisonment and its broader implications for prisoners, the penal system, and for criminal justice in the UK more generally.
I am interested by how people cope, and survive, when they are facing lengthy or lifelong punishment after a serious conviction. Partly, this is a question relating to the practical and emotional challenges of imprisonment, though this is well explored by existing research. What is less thoroughly researched is the moral dimensions of extreme sentences: the claim that they communicate society’s disapproval of the index offence, while conveying to the person convicted that they deserve to suffer for their actions, and ought to change. An interest in how people respond to this message has been a consistent thread in my research career.
My doctorate, completed in 2024 at the Cambridge Prisons Research Centre was jointly funded by UKRI and Quakers in Britain. It investigated the ethical experiences in prison of men serving mandatory life sentences for murder, exploring how they make sense of their situation and attempted to construct positive identities in an unpromising setting.
Building on this foundation, my current work at Southampton explores the purpose and future of parole in England & Wales. It explores the intersections between the sociology of prisons and punishment, moral philosophy (specifically, penal theory), and criminal law. As well as publishing my PhD, I plan to conduct new empirical research on parole decision-making, and to develop plans for a larger quantitative study on the same topic.
I welcome contact and am interested in building networks at Southampton and beyond. If you find what I’m doing interesting and want to make contact, please get in touch and introduce yourself.