The Department of Criminology (University of Manchester) Review of the Academic Year 2021-22

A growing department

We were very lucky to have grown as a department,  and this year were pleased to welcome a number of new staff:

• Dr Eon Kim
• Dr Katie Benson 
• Dr Jon Davies
• Dr Nico Trajtenberg
• Dr Olga Sanchez De Ribera
• Dr David Straw
• Dr Fiamma Terenghi

They are all already doing great things in – and for – the department.  

Our social media presence has continued to grow and we now have an Instagram account - follow us @Criminologyuom. Our Twitter handle is also @criminologyUoM. You can also find us on Facebook (Criminology Manchester).

Teaching

The 2021-22 academic year started with a bumper crop of first year students and a return to face-to-face teaching. While there were initial challenges, especially those associated with dual delivery online and on campus, the patience and understanding of the students made sure it was overall a positive experience. For the second semester all teaching was face-to-face - yay! Our colleagues  have commented how good it has been to be back in the classroom with our students again.  Thanks to all students studying criminology at The University of Manchester this year who have embraced their learning, contributed to discussions and remained inquisitive and engaged through another year of tough circumstances. 

It was great to celebrate with 2020 and 2021 students, who, because of the pandemic, were unable to graduate in person at the usual time, with their deferred celebration in March.  It was also good to celebrate our 3rd year graduating students at the criminology ball in early June and graduation in July. Congratulations to all those graduating in person this year - you have done us proud.

We would like to use this opportunity to thank Dr Jon Shute for everything he has done in his role as Director of Teaching and Learning over the last few years. He really has made a difference to our pedagogy and practice and we have all learnt from, and been supported by, him.

This year saw the launch of our new MSc in Financial Crime and the first cohort of students are doing well and a second cohort are starting in September. Each cohort will attend three weekend Masterclasses and the first one in person, held at the University from 17th-19th June 2022 was very successful. Students attended from various parts of the world and there were a range of guest speakers from industry and academia. 

Members of the criminology department (Dr Jon Davies, Dr Emily Turner, Professor Julia Buxton, Dr Jon Shute and Professor Judith Aldridge) have been central to designing a new transdisciplinary degree programme for the School of Social Sciences. The BA Global Social Challenges will be launched in 2023. The central aim of this programme is to equip students with the critical skills that they need to understand the dynamics, organisation, and governance of challenges that result in globally significant harms. Students will learn the skills to approach some of the most pressing contemporary global challenges, including social injustice, conflicts and violence, climate change, and the migration and displacement of people.

Teaching Awards and Achievements

• Just before this academic year began Reka Solymosi was awarded one of the Teachers of the Year in the University of Manchester Distinguished Achievement Awards - watch her talk about her teaching here.
• Dr Rose Broad, Dr William Floodgate and Dr Emily Turner have all recently been recognised with Manchester’s Exceptional Performance awards. This is following the success of Dr Jon Shute and Dr Lisa Williams who were recognised last year.
• Dr Marion Vannier was promoted to Senior Lecturer.
• Dr Jon Shute was appointed to the UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowship Peer Review College.
• Dr Emily Turner was awarded highly commended in the Outstanding UG Dissertation (or Long Essay/Research Project) Supervisor and the Outstanding Academic Advisor category for the Teaching, Learning and Student Experience Outstanding Staff Awards 2021/22.  
• Dr Claire Fox has recently been appointed as the Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for the School of Social Sciences.
• Jane Horton and Carlos Iglesias were the criminology TA of the Year award recipients. 

PhD Students

A number of our PhD students passed their vivas  - Yongyu Zeng, Siyu Luo, Yutaka Yoshida and Alysha Shivji. Congratulations to all these new Doctors!

We held our second annual PGR criminology symposium #crimsym in early July. A really interesting day and great to hear from the majority of our PGR students about their work.

Dr Caroline Miles (PGR Director for Criminology) took a group of our PhD students to Gladstones Library for a 2 day writing retreat, which they all found incredibly productive and enjoyable.

We are now in our 3rd year of the Criminology Cafe - a joint enterprise for researchers and research students to showcase their work-in-progress. This is seen as a valuable experience by all those who take part.  It is also great for all members of the department to hear what everyone is researching. We were lucky this year to have Dr Louise Brangan from the University of Strathclyde attend as an external speaker.

Research Awards and Achievements

We held our first Research Away Day post-covid, and this was a great opportunity to be together after a long time, to share our research progress and to discuss the research identity of Criminology at Manchester. We will be adding in some more research-related staff activities to complement the Criminology Cafe in the upcoming year.

Prof Emma Barrett continues to lead The Security, Privacy, Identity and Trust Engagement Network Plus (SPRITE+). This is funded by the EPSRC and is a UK-wide network that brings together experts from academia, business, industry, government and civil society to tackle existing and emerging challenges to trust and security in the digital age. 

In May 2021 the University of Manchester launched its new Centre for Digital Trust and Society with significant involvement from Criminology department staff. This was led by Prof Emma Barrett, who has since passed on the Director role to Prof Nick Lord.  There was an anniversary forum held in July 2022 to build connections and share insights. 

Dr Katie Benson continues as Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies and is part of the Taskforce on a Transatlantic Response to Illicit Finance, hosted by the RUSI centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies.

Dr Rose Broad was elected Fellow of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and did important work with them on the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK's Modern Slavery programme delivering her final report in 2022.

Prof Dave Gadd, Dr Caroline Miles and Dr Nicole Renehan helped to shape Greater Manchester’s Gender Based Violence strategy.

In October 2021 Dr David Buil-Gil was awarded the Early Career Researcher Award by the Office for National Statistics for his work ‘Small area estimation for criminological research’. 

In March 2022 Prof Nick Lord and Dr David Buil-Gil (co-authored with Steven Kemp and Fernando Miro-LLinares) won the RISCS Quantification and Cyber Risk prize competition for the paper titled ‘When do businesses report cybercrime? Findings from a UK study’ published in the journal ‘Criminology and Criminal Justice’. 

Duncan Craig started his Simon Industrial Fellowship. He was awarded this to build expertise in narrative and biographical research that can be used to understand the nature of change embarked on by male survivors of sexual assault who are serving prison sentences. Duncan is the CEO of the charity Survivors Manchester. In April he was awarded a medal of honour from the University of Manchester.

Dr Jo Deakin continues her advisory work at a European level - she is Ethics Advisor and External Evaluator for Horizon Europe proposals, the European Commission’s research and innovation funding programme.

PGR Sebastian Acevedo was appointed Head of the Studies Division of the Undersecretary of Public Safety of Chile. In this role he will consider crime data & evaluate crime prevention programs.

Our Head of Department, Prof Judith Aldridge, alongside Jennifer Fleetwood and Caroline Chatwin won the 2021 British Society of Criminology ‘Women, Crime and Criminal Justice’ Prize for their article  ‘Gendering research on online illegal drug markets’ in  Addiction Research & Theory’. 

Dr Rose Broad has been elected to the Editorial board of the British Journal of Criminology.

Prof Judith Aldridge continues her work on the UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs

Since March 2021 Dr Caroline Miles has been on an Expert Advisory Group for a research project in Australia, ‘Adolescent family violence in Australia: A national study of prevalence, use of and exposure to violence, and support needs for young people’.

Dr Rose Broad is co-leading Project Honeycomb to better understand modern slavery and human trafficking in Greater Manchester in order to help combat it. The University of Manchester is linking up with leading research and technology development company Trilateral Research to embark on the project, which will take place over the next three years. The project is funded by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), and is part of the city’s responsibility to take a robust approach to slavery and human trafficking.

Dr David Buil-Gil will be working with colleagues from 5 UK universities on the PrivIoT project funded by PETRA. The project will explore the digital harms of consumer IoT devices at home and smart meters. 

Prof David Gadd and Dr Rose Broad will lead a project on modern slavery within the new ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre that is led by the Universities of York and Leeds. The Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre is the first of its kind to study how vulnerabilities - such as exploitation by county lines drug networks, online child sexual exploitation, domestic abuse, modern slavery, mental illness and homelessness - affect policing. Rose and Dave’s project seeks to redefine what realistic outcomes with regard to policing modern slavery might look like and how these could encompass a preventative dimension that reduces demand on police services over the longer term.

Dr Marion Vannier was awarded a coveted Future Leaders Fellowship by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for a four-year project which will research the meaning and value of hope in the case of people who are the least likely to be released from prison during their lifetimes - namely elderly prisoners serving life sentences.

Dr Jo Deakin has recently received ESRC funding for an event as part of the Festival of Social Sciences.

Prof. Judith Aldridge and Dr Rose Broad were awarded ESRC IAA funding for an exciting new project on responding to adult victims of 'cuckooing' in Greater Manchester, in collaboration with GMCA.

Looking to the next academic year

Over the summer we will be working on strengthening the identity of the criminology department by adorning our corridors of Williamson Building, and our common room, with research-themed photos taken by our colleagues over the years. We will also be getting ready to launch sustainable criminology-branded merchandise. In between research and teaching preparation we are all having a good break to ensure we come back refreshed and ready to welcome new and returning students to the new academic year. While we have always had peer mentors the next academic year will see the launch of criminology student specific peer mentors for our first year students which we are excited about.