Centre Leadership

Centre Co-Director Professor Yvonne Jewkes, Professor of Criminology in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences.

Yvonne Jewkes is co-director of the Centre for Prisons Research. Yvonne's main research interests are prison architecture, design and technology (ADT) and how they can assist in rehabilitating offenders, enhancing prisoners' quality of life and wellbeing, reducing trauma, increasing perceptions of penal legitimacy, encouraging compliance with the regime, improving prisoner-staff relations, and making prison staff feel like a professionalised and valued workforce. To find out more about her work on prison architecture, you can view Yvonne’s dedicated website. Yvonne has held significant research grants and her research activities directly complement the work of the Centre for Prisons Research. Yvonne is currently accepting doctoral students.

Centre Co-Director Dr Kate Gooch, Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences.

Kate Gooch is co-director of the Centre for Prisons Research. Kate’s research on prisons, youth justice and the criminal law, and the use of qualitative and ethnographic research methods underpins the work of the Centre. Kate is currently the principal investigator on three projects: 1) an ESRC funded grant entitled ‘The Rehabilitative Prison: An oxymoron or an opportunity to radically reform imprisonment?’ 2) Understanding and preventing prison homicide; 3) An international comparative study of prison violence in England, Australia and New Zealand. Kate is currently accepting doctoral students.

Centre Members

Georgina Barkham, Research Assistant and Postgraduate Research Student in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences.

Having completed her Sociology BA at the University of Warwick and Criminology MSc at the University of Leicester, Georgie Barkham is now a first year PhD student conducting an ethnography of a prison gym. Georgie has previously undertaken research project work on prisoner rehabilitation, crime in prison, and the experience of veteran prisoners and staff. She has experience of conducting research in different category prisons in England and Wales and internationally. Georgie is now a Research Assistant on the ESRC-funded Rehabilitative Prison project alongside her doctoral studies.

Holly Dempsey, PhD Researcher in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences.

Holly is researching experiences of nature in prisons, with a focus on how biophilia and biophobia are experienced by prisoners and staff in the UK and Denmark. Her research also explores how nature can be included in the built environment, and what effects the built environment and regime of prisons have on wellbeing and relationships to nature. Further research interests include carceral geography, sensory research, carceral health, animal-based interventions, prison design and hauntology.