Overview

Broadly, our work aims to better understand the harms and conflicts that we criminalise and penalise, the harms and conflicts that criminalisation and penalisation cause, and how we might develop responses which could create fairer and safer societies rather than exacerbating social injustices and inequalities.

Our staff are involved in many research projects and networks in Scotland, the UK, and internationally. As well as guaranteeing support from postgraduate researcher supervisors at the cutting edge of the discipline, this creates opportunities for students to engage in dialogue with related government departments, criminal justice organisations, NGOs, people with lived experience of criminal justice and activist groups seeking justice reform and/or abolition.

Glasgow is a founding partner and administrative base of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research(SCCJR) which spans five Scottish universities (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier, Stirling and Strathclyde). For staff and postgraduate researchers, SCCJR provides access to a wide range of activities and development opportunities.

Though we draw on a wide range of disciplines, our approach to criminology at Glasgow is rooted in and informed principally by sociological analyses of crime and punishment. We insist on interrogating the relationships between criminal and social justice andinjustice.

In particular, our staff have expertise in:

• Young people, crime and youth justice (especially youth violence and gangs)
• Social and legal responses to gender-based violence
• Criminalisation and punishment of women
• Inequalities and intersectionality (including in relation to disability)
• Security studies, including policing and regulation
• Sentencing and the penal system, particularly imprisonment, parole and probation
• Desistance from crime, rehabilitation and reintegration
• Media, culture and representations of crime and punishment
• Criminological theory, including urban criminology, cultural criminology, critical criminology, digital criminology, sensory criminology, punishment and society studies, and feminist perspectives
• Creative and collaborative approaches to criminological research
• Illicit markets, including the contemporary global trade in looted cultural objects

Our research degrees offer unique opportunities:

• Collaborating with and access to others who care about doing justice in better ways and to better effect
• Training in research methods and skills, not just in established quantitative and qualitative methods, but also in mixed methods research and in more recent or emerging approaches such as creative, visual and digital methods.
• Developing new theoretical, conceptual and interdisciplinary approaches to studying crime and justice.

We host and support numerous training and professional development activities for students, many of them student-led, often in collaboration with our partners in SCCJR. We also offer a diverse programme of regular seminars features leading scholars in the field and informal working lunches, where we seek regular postgraduate researcher contributions.

Study options

PhD in Criminology: 3 years full-time; 5 years part-time. Thesis length 70,000-100,000 words
(Students may enrol in either the PhD in Sociology or PhD Criminology)

MRes: For students who do not already have a Masters degree in relevant research methods, the PhD programme can include initial admission to our MRes in Criminology.

If you are new to Criminology as a subject, you might also want to consider one of our taught Masters programmes in Criminology & Criminal Justice.

Contact us

• For any questions about our PhD programme, please contact our Postgraduate Research Convenor: Caitlin.Gormley@glasgow.ac.uk
• For any questions about our Masters programmes, please contact: socpol-pgt-criminology@glasgow.ac.uk