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Centre for Criminology

Postgraduate Research

Completing your PhD with the Centre for Criminology

The Centre for Criminology is dedicated to supporting and guiding our PhD students throughout their academic journey. Our committed team regularly meet with students, providing supervision, support, guidance and valuable feedback on their work.

As part of our commitment to fostering an enriching academic environment, the Centre for Criminology arranges frequent seminars featuring esteemed external speakers. These seminars present excellent opportunities for Postgraduate Research (PGR) students to establish connections within the academic community and stay updated on the latest groundbreaking research in the field.

Our members are experts in various areas of criminology, ensuring a diverse range of research and expertise. Some of the topics our team covers include criminological theory, punishment and penalty, criminal justice, comparative criminal justice, media and criminal justice, crime and gender, domestic abuse, policing, police ethics, data-driven policing, surveillance, victimology, organised crime, human trafficking, mafia studies, state crime and power, control and the city, urban disorder, military studies, corruption, green criminology, environmental crime, illegal drug use, and social movements.

We pride ourselves on offering a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment for our PhD students, equipping them with the necessary tools and knowledge to excel in their research endeavors.

Our research supervisors

Dr Carlos Solar

Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Areas of supervision: Armed Forces and Society; Criminal Policy; Cybersecurity and cyber defence; Policing; Security Governance; States and Organized Crime; and Corruption

Dr Darren Thiel

Senior Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Areas of supervision: Social class and stratification; economic sociology; migration, globalisation and governance; globalisation and policing; policing terrorism; the criminal justice system; and social policy

Dr Isabel Crowhurst

Reader

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Areas of supervision: Gender and sexuality; Sex work and sex industry studies; The intersection of sexual and economic citizenship; Fiscal sociology and critical taxation studies

Dr Johanna Romer

Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Dr Katerina Hadjimatheou

Senior Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Areas of supervision: Domestic abuse

Dr Sergio Lo Iacono

Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Areas of supervision: Experimental Sociology; Climate Change; Social Cohesion; Social Networks; Quantitative Methods; Trust; and Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Migration

Professor Anna Sergi

Professor

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Professor Chris Greer

Pro-Vice Chancellor Research and Professor

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Areas of supervision: Trial by Media, Scandal, Serious Youth, Violence, Victimology, and Celebrity

Professor Eamonn Carrabine

Professor

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex

Areas of supervision: Crime and the Media; Cultural and Social Geography; Popular Music and Sociological Thinking; Punishment and Human Rights; Sociology of Imprisonment; Visual Sociology; and Youth Culture

Past Postgraduate Research Project

Over the years our students have researched many different themes and topics alongside the Centre, below are a selection of them:

Projects include:

Organised Food Crime? Analysing Harmful and Criminal Activities in the Food Supply Chain in England and in Italy
Resisting State Surveillance in the Digital Age: Precarious Coalitions, Contested Knowledge and Diverse Opposition to Mass-Surveillance and the UK's Investigatory Powers Act
What Police Do? What Victims Need? a Qualitative Analysis of the Police Response to Domestic Violence (In Essex)
Partnership and Power: Domestic Violence, the Women's Sector, and the Criminal Justice System
Island of Solace or Gateway to Servitude? The Relationship Between European and Maltese Immigration Policy and the Human Trafficking of African Irregular Migrants in Malta
Data-Driven Policing: How Digital Technologies Transform the Practice and Governance of Policing
Countering Kidnapping in a Globalised World: A Critical Analysis of the Production, Transfer and Application of High Security Knowledge
Policing Talk: An Investigation in to the Interaction of the Officer and the Suspect in Police Interviews
Suspicious Perinatel Death and the Law: Criminalising Mothers Who Do Not Conform
Vendetta and Restorative Justice: The Case of Sasmos in Highland Crete
From Narcotrafficking to Alternative Governance: An Ethnographic Study on Los Caballeros Templarios and the Mutation of Organized Crime in Michoacán, Mexico
Response to Domestic Abuse in Turkey: A Feminist Analysis
The Local DrUG Economy: The Case of Hashish Production in a Post Soviet Kyrgyz Village
The Socio-Legal Construction of Organised Crime in Romania
Marital Rape in Croatia: Law, Economic Precarity and the Politics of Professional Judgement
Contextualizing Parolee Reintegration: Narrative Themes in Community Re-engagement in Two Cities in the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada
Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of the Visual in Criminology
Implications of the Different Experiences of Corruption on Police Confidence and Legitimacy in Ghana: An Exploratory Study
Between Legality and Empathy: An Examination of the Coroner's Inquest and its Impact on the Emotions of Those Bereaved By Road Death
Doing Harder Time? The Experiences of an Ageing Prison Population
Imprisonment in Thailand: The Impact of the 2003 War on Drugs Policy
Individuals, Families and Neighbourhoods: Predictors of Domestic Abuse in Essex
Rethinking Child Trafficking in Nepal: Victimhood, Agency and Beyond
Policing Gangs in London: Perceptions of the Process From Key Practitioners
Capturing Appalachia: Visualizing Coal, Culture, and Ecology
Struggling with Justice: Women's Experiences of Imprisonment in Taiwan
Governing Sex, Building the Nation: The Politics of Prostitution in Postcolonial Taiwan (1945 – 1979)

"Working as aFrontrunner for the Centre has been an amazing opportunity for me. I have beenable to learn new skills and gain valuable work experience in academia that Iwould not have found in many other positions. As well as this, being a doctoralsupervisee of one of the members of the Centre means that I get to conduct myresearch in a supportive and encouraging environment while also learning fromother experienced scholars in my field.”

Taylor Skevington Postgraduate Research Student

Current PGR students working with the Centre

Aruna Mahananda

Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Sociology and Criminology

Inequality and Punishment: An insight from released prisoners from India. Supervisor: Dr Alexandra Cox and Professor Peter Fussey

Esin Damar

Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Sociology and Criminology

Katie Reid

Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Sociology and Criminology

Working title: Identifying domestic abuse as a factor in cases of filicide and the practices of agencies involved. Supervisor: Professor Eamonn Carrabine