Profile

Areas of expertise

• Victimisation
• Illicit drug use
• Criminal careers
• Administration of justice

Biography

It was whilst studying for my first degree in Social Policy at Manchester that I first developed an interest in criminology - an interest which has subsequently dictated my whole career. My masters degree, was not, as the title might suggest, in Economics but in Applied Social Research. My dissertation looked at the ways in which the media represent women who kill.

I joined the Home Office Research and Planning Unit in 1989 and over the following ten years conducted and managed research in a number of areas: women and the criminal justice system, child witnesses, rape, domestic violence, legal controls of obscene materials, and policing and prosecution. I also spent a fascinating year at the Crown Prosecution Service managing their research programme. This year sparked an interest in the relationship between the police and the CPS in the prosecution process - an interest I would like to pursue in future research.

Having moved to York in 1999, I worked freelance for the Home Office for five years (whilst bringing up my two children) mainly as an editor and proof reader and undertaking small research projects.

I was then in 2003 invited by Hull University to do some guest lecturing. A similar collaboration with York then followed - finally resulting in my coming to work as a teaching fellow on the crime pathway in the Applied Social Science degree in 2005.

I really enjoy teaching, the students provide continually new perspectives on topics and crime is an ever-changing area of policy and practice - with new issues coming to the fore such as knife crime; and new ways of tackling offending being constantly attempted. There is never time to sit still or get bored with crime as your topic and I now also teach a course on illicit drug use – an issue inextricably linked with crime – but with a whole new political agenda, and policy and practice issues to explore.