Professor Michele Burman
Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences / Professor of Criminology
Professor Burman is an experienced research leader, and a Founding Co-Director of the multi-institutional Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR).
Michele has substantial specialist knowledge of and research expertise in gender, crime and justice. Michele’s work makes a significant contribution to research, policy and practice; she is internationally recognised as expert in three interrelated areas:
- criminal justice responses to gender-based violence,
- young women’s experiences and uses of violence, and
- criminal justice responses to female offenders.
Committed to high quality social science and its application to ‘real world’ problems of social justice, her work is focused primarily on addressing the inequalities that are a cause and consequence of gender-based violence.
Michele has published widely, and uses many forms of dissemination aimed at academic, policy and practice audiences. She has held almost 40 research grants, studentships and fellowships and secured over £4 million in research funding from a range of prestigious funders. Her most recent projects include research on the use of advocacy services in the criminal investigation of rape and serious sexual assault; a socio-legal analysis of law and policy in relation to domestic abuse, and; an exploration of the experience of vicarious trauma on those who work with justice-involved women and girls.
Michele is co-Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Criminology and Criminal Justice and Co-convenor of the European Society of Criminology Working Group on Gender, Crime and Justice. She served as an expert on the Social Work/Social Policy sub-panel in the Research Excellence Framework 2014.
