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I am a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and an ADR UK (Adminstrative Data Research) Research Fellow. My ADR research project is examining the relationship between school exclusions and offending using a Ministry of Justice and Department of Education deidentified linked dataset. I am also Deputy Director of the Crime and Policing Research Centre.

I joined the Department of Behavioural and Social Sciences as a Lecturer in Criminology in June 2021 shortly after completing my PhD. I completed my doctoral studies in the School of Law at the University of Sheffield, following completion of an MA in International Criminology also at the University of Sheffield.

Prior to commencing the Fellowship, I was Course Leader for BSc Criminology and module leader for Introduction to Criminology and Criminal Justice and Introduction to Explaining Crime. I have taught on a range of modules including Exploring the Social Sciences, Working with Offenders and Victims, Experiencing Punishment in the Penal System and Final Year Project. During the course of my PhD, I taught modules on the BA Criminology and on the BA Sociology with Criminology at the University of Sheffield including: Comprehending Criminology, Analysing Crime Data, Criminology Research Project, Youth Crime and Justice, and Crime, Justice and Social Policy. Following completion of my PhD, I was an Associate Lecturer for a short period (January to April 2021) teaching Research Methods (quantitative) and Motivational Interviewing and Behavioural Change in the College of Health, Wellbeing, and Life Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University. I also worked as a Research Assistant (April to June 2021) in the School of Law at the University of Sheffield administering a survey and undertaking quantitative and qualitative analysis on a project investigating students’ sense of belonging, engagement, and self-confidence.

Prior to returning to academia in 2016 to complete my MA and PhD, I worked for almost a decade as a probation officer in the National Probation Service. As part of the probation officer training, I completed a BA (Hons) in Community and Criminal Justice and an NVQ Level 4 in Community Justice (Working with Offending Behaviour) at De Montfort University. Prior to this, I completed a P.G.C.E in Post-compulsory Education and Training at Sheffield Hallam University and worked for a number of years teaching languages (I completed my first degree in Modern Languages at the University of Huddersfield in 1998) in secondary and further education.

I am a mixed methods researcher with my research interests stemming from my professional experience as a probation officer. I observed the impacts of policy decisions on the experiences of individuals on probation across multiple policy areas. My research therefore takes a multi-disciplinary approach considering the interactions between policy areas (i.e. criminal justice, education, and welfare). I am particularly interested in punitiveness in the form of sanctioning ‘rulebreakers’ as a policy response. Additionally, I am interested in the impacts on practitioners of working in the criminal justice system.