ERC RaRiE PhD Scholarship - Rehabilitation and Reintegration: Technologies, practices and experiences.

Information on the School/Research Group 

Criminology at Glasgow sits within the Division of Sociological and Cultural Studies alongside 3 other subjects: Social Anthropology & Migration Studies; Media, Culture & Society; and Sociology. The Division is one of three in the University’s School of Social and Political Sciences.  

Criminology at Glasgow also hosts the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR), which spans 5 Scottish universities.

Within these contexts, Criminology at Glasgow aims to better understand many kinds of harms and wrongs, and the consequences of attempts to regulate, criminalise and/or penalise these harms and wrongs. Our research seeks to expose, understand and challenge multiple forms of violence – including forms of violence which are environmental, structural, systemic, symbolic and inter-personal. We also try to develop new responses which could create fairer, safer and more sustainable societies, rather than exacerbating social inequalities. To these ends, as individuals and as a team (including staff, students and PhD researchers), we work in ways that are critical and reflective but also engaged. We seek to collaborate creatively with other activists, people with lived experience, practitioners, policymakers and wider publics to build movements for change. 

Our approach to Criminology is primarily sociological, although the staff within the team come from a variety of academic backgrounds and our research and teaching are most often interdisciplinary (for example, intersecting with geography, history, law, philosophy, psychology, social policy and social work).   

Supervisory Team

Prinicipal Supervisor: Professor Fergus McNeill

Secondary Supervisor(s): Professor Thomas Ugelvik (University of Oslo) and Professor Miranda Boone (Leiden University)

Project details

This PhD project is one of three within a European Research Council Advanced Grant project entitled Rehabilitation and Reintegration in Europe (RaRiE), led by Professor Fergus McNeill with colleagues in the Universities of Leiden and Oslo.

By examining evidence from three countries that are often considered ‘progressive’ in penal policy and practice terms (the Netherlands, Norway and Scotland), the RaRiE project aims to help us better understand whether and where rehabilitation lives up to its ideals, and to creatively, critically and comparatively interrogate its development and prospects, its coherences and contradictions, its rhetoric and its realities, its pitfalls and its possibilities.  Through a new approach called Dialogical Comparative Penology (DCP), building on the interdisciplinary approaches that used by the investigators in a series of innovative, high-impact research projects, RaRiE will provide a uniquely comprehensive analysis of the nature and impact of rehabilitation in these three nations. It will also develop new tools and metrics for critically assessing rehabilitative systems and practices, to better direct their future development. In and through dialogue with policymakers, senior leaders in prison and probation systems, practitioners, activists and people with lived experience of rehabilitation, RaRiE will help to improve the fairness and effectiveness of European penal systems. RaRiE’s ambition -- the ‘step-change’ it offers – lies both in developing a new approach to comparative penology, and in using that new approach to reshape how rehabilitation is understood and developed in Europe.

Across 4 ‘work packages’, the RaRiE project will:

1. Examine how the rehabilitative ideal has been understood, constructed, contested and represented in each country;
2. map and measure the scale and shape of rehabilitation as it exists and is pursued in each country, and at what cost;
3. examine and assess how and to what extent, rehabilitation is operationalised via technologies (including tools and techniques) in each country; and
4. explore how rehabilitation is understood and experiences by those directly involved in its everyday practices (i.e. those practising and those undergoing rehabilitation) in each country.

PhD researchers in Glasgow, Leiden and Oslo will conduct within-country studies related to work packages 3 and 4. They will also have opportunities to engage with project partners, to work with diverse participants, and to participate in comparative aspects of the study. Further details of the project’s aims, research questions, methods and outputs will be made available to short-listed applicants but, in sum, this Glasgow-based PhD will use qualitative methods (primarily interviews) to address the following questions:

• How and in what forms is rehabilitaiton in Scotland operationalised via new and old technologies?
• How is rehabilitation in Scotland understoos and experienced by those dir3ectly involved in its everyday practices (i.e. those designing, those practicising, and those undergoing rehabilitaiton)?

Applicants may find it useful to read and refer to the RaRiE Briefing for PhD applicants for further information and context to the RaRiE project.

Eligibility

Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Applicants will have a good Masters degree (or overseas equivalent) in Criminology or closely related discipline.
• Applicants will have a demonstratable interest in and knowledge of rehabilitation and reintegration research.
• Applicants must be able to commit to study full-time only.
• The successful applicant will be Glasgow-based, but must also be able to travel internationally (to participate in the wider project ot which the PhD contributes).

Please note that all applicants must also meet the entry requirements for the Criminology, PhD. 

Award details

The scholarship is available as a full-time +4 (4 year) PhD programme only. The programme commencement date is flexible but will begin no earlier than March 2026 and no later than May 2026. The funding includes:

• An annual stipend at the UKRI rate
• Fees at the standard home or international tuition fee rate
• Students can also draw on a Research Training Support Grant, usually up to a maximum of £940 per year (in the first 3 years of a PhD only)
• Funding of direct fieldwork costs and, where required, of particpation in international meetings and conferences will be provided via the project grant.

Application process

Applicants must apply via the Scholarships Application Portal (please see Scholarships Application Portal - Applicant Guide for more information).The funding opportunity is under 'College of Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Funding > COSS-25-017') uploading the following documentation:

• ERC RaRiE PhD Scholarship application form (in Word format)
• Academic transcripts (All relevant Undergraduate and Master’s level degree transcripts (and translations, if not originally in English) – provisional transcripts are sufficient if you are yet to complete your degree).
• Contact details for two referees (where possible your referees should include an academic familiar with your work (within the last 5 years). Both referees can be academics but you may include a work referee, especially if you have been out of academia for more than 5 years). Please note, a CoSS PGR Funding Reference template will be sent to your referees for completion)*. Note that no member of this project's supervisory team can act as your referee. Please see CoSS PGR Funding Reference request guide for further guidance
• Curriculum Vitae (CV) (academic where applicable)

*Please note that when you enter your referees contact details on the Scholarships Application Portal and send the reference request, your referees are expected to provide their references by the closing date of the Scholarship (below). It is strongly recommended you complete this as soon as possible, as late or incomplete applications will not be considered.

Application Closing Date: 05 February 2026

References due no later than 12 February 2026

Selection process

Applications will be assessed by the project team. Shortlisted applicants may be requested to attend an Interview.

Shortlisted applicants may be asked to provide further work (exact format to be confirmed but could be new or existing writing or a presentation to be confirmed) by the Selection panel. 

All scholarship awards are subject to candidates successfully securing admission to a PhD programme in the School of Social and Political Sciences. Successful applicants will be invited to apply for admission to the relevant PhD programme after they are selected for funding.

Key contact

Professor Fergus McNeill