Criminology/Criminal Justice (PhD)

Proposals would seek to explore crime analysis techniques and/or spatial /temporal concentrations of crime in very small units of analysis, including individual addresses or particular types of premises (eg hospitals, airports). Research findings would add to our knowledge of crime generators, attractors and risky facilities or the work of crime analysts. Research in this field may also explore the role, impact and experiences of crime analysts. In both cases, quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches are welcome.

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

• Dr Michelle Rogerson

The current approach to designing out terrorist threat has very much focused upon using situational target hardening measures to block terrorist threat, be that bollards in front of major national infrastructure sites, or defensive architecture that reduces the aesthetic appeal of places and can enhance perceptions of threat. Working closely with Police Counter Terrorist Security Advisors (CTSAs), Urban Designers, Planners and Architects this PhD will explore the existing methods of designing cities to reduce terrorist threat, but will focus upon ways in which positive psychology (the work of Prof. Roach) can be used to design in the pro-social as opposed to simply designing out the ‘outsider’ threat.

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

• Professor Rachel Armitage
• Professor Jason Roach

Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) is an approach to crime reduction that aims to reduce crime by influencing the design, build and management of the built, and sometimes natural, environment. Research has shown that this approach can be effective in reducing acquisitive crimes such as burglary and vehicle crime. However, there is little evidence to explore its impact upon anti-social behaviour.

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

• Professor Rachel Armitage

Southern Criminology is a theoretical perspective that shifts the focus from the state criminal justice process to global inequalities, transnational crime, and postcolonial politics. Comparative and Transnational Criminology goes beyond normative analysis to explore problems that do not belong exclusively in one place or another and can therefore only be understood by analysing linkages between places. The key to this is the observation that things happening in one locality are increasingly shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice-versa.

Doctoral research projects in this field should address the tension between traditional security theories that focused on the security of states, inter-state conflict, power politics, and global alliances; with more critical and human security perspectives where the central position of state security and power politics have been contested both theoretically and methodological. Projects exploring case studies from Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America will be more than welcome for consideration.

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

• Dr Camilo Tamayo gomez

Research in the field of green criminology, particularly that focusing on nonhuman animal harm, wildlife crime and forest crime. Projects may take a criminological, enforcement or socio-legal perspective and multi-disciplinary studies involving other Schools within the university are also welcomed. Research may be qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods.

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

• Professor Jason Roach

Crimes committed by, against and within immigrant communities; immigrant concentration and its impact on crime; relationships between immigrant communities and native populations.

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

• Dr Dainis Ignatans
• Dr Michelle Rogerson

Although investigative guidance is available for UK police conducting ‘live’ investigations, it is not currently for those deemed cold or historic cases. It is assumed therefore that investigative decision making is generic and that the same cognitive bias exists. Ongoing research suggests that this is not the case and research is required to explore this further.

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

• Dr Howard Atkin
• Professor Jason Roach

Policing has been evidenced to be a highly stressful occupation with various opportunities for trauma to occur. Recent estimates demonstrate a disparity between psychological sick leave and self-reported symptomology using psychological testing. At face values this suggests that a substantial proportion of officers who experience psychological symptomology do not take sick leave despite experiencing serve symptomology. One particular hypothesis is that police colleagues might be unable to recognise mental health symptomology. The proposed research seeks to measure mental health literacy in police employees to determine the levels of mental health literacy which could be influential in responding to wellbeing alongside dealing with members of the public exhibiting mental health problems.

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

• Dr Ashley Cartwright
• Professor Jason Roach

Nudge psychology is becoming an increasingly popular approach to reducing various different crime related problems. Further research is needed to examine how it might be applied to other areas of crime reduction.

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

• Professor Jason Roach

Paedophile hunter groups are vastly growing in the United Kingdom and are contributing evidence in up to 46% of trials for those charged with meeting a child after sexual grooming (BBC, 2017). However, the relationship the hunters share with the police is one of contempt with hunters being prosecuted for their actions (Milne, 2018). To date, no research has explored this developing problem and a pertinent place to start is through capturing the public perceptions’ pf paedophile hunter activities. The proposed research would utilise a cross sectional online survey to gauge whether the public support the activities of hunter groups.

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

• Dr Ashley Cartwright
• Professor Jason Roach

Investigations of long term crime and victimisation patterns, changes in incidence concentration and seriousness across large cohorts.

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

• Dr Dainis Ignatans
• Dr Michelle Rogerson

Crime has been falling since the 1990s, yet none of the causes suggested so far explain a significant proportion of the drop. Students looking to further expand the research on the topic in quantitative manner are welcome.

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

• Dr Dainis Ignatans
• Dr Christopher Cameron

The relationship between transitional justice, disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) and peacebuilding can be understood as a component of the research field of human rights, focusing particularly on the area of the studies that explore particular contested relationships of political, cultural, and social collective actions making in the aftermath of armed conflicts or authoritarianism.

Doctoral research projects in this field can address theoretical and methodological frameworks to understand how contemporary actions of victims’ social solidarity can and should be known and acted upon in transitional justice scenarios; and what justice, reparation, and reconciliation are and what must be done with it in the wake of atrocities and suffering.

Reserarch projects questioning or exploring how the four traditional elements of transitional justice (truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence) are interrelated in particular cases studies, or initiatives understanding the link between transitional justice and peacebuilding, are more than welcome.

Also, projects questioning by what means victims’ social actions can be understood as an exercise of social agency by survivors of armed conflicts and how these actions can dispute traditional approaches to the legalism of the justice of transitional justice (in order to explore novel social mechanisms of reparation beyond truth commissions, tribunals, and trials) will have special attention to be supervised.

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

• Dr Camilo Tamayo gomez