Criminology PhD

A vibrant research community in criminology supports students to become excellent researchers who are theoretically informed and actively engaged in the public debate about crime and justice.

Overview

Our staff are involved in numerous research projects at UK, European and International levels which create opportunities for students to gain access to and network with organisations ranging from the local police to the United Nations. We are a founding partner of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and home of the Trafficking Culture programme.

Areas of research interest which could offer opportunities for research supervision include:

• Young people, crime and youth justice (especially youth violence and gangs)
• Gender, crime and justice (especially young female offenders, gendered violence)
• Organised crime and white collar crime
• Security studies, including transnational policing and regulation
• Sentencing and punishment, particularly imprisonment, parole and probation
• Desistance from crime, rehabilitation and reintegration in theory and practice
• Media, culture and representation of crime and punishment
• Projects employing cultural criminology, critical criminology or feminist theory perspectives
• Illicit markets, including the contemporary global trade in looted cultural objects

Our research degrees offer unique opportunities:

• Collaborating with and access to those working in and making justice policy in Scotland, Europe and beyond
• Training in research methods and skills, including in novel and emerging approaches such as visual, digital and qualitative 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 (such as our annual away weekend for PhD students). A diverse programme of seminars and working lunches feature leading scholars in the field as well as regular student contributions. Thesis length 70,000-100,000 words.

Entry to our PhD programme generally requires a good 2.1 in a first degree or a merit or distinction in a Masters degree. It helps to have qualifications in criminology or a closely related subject (like law, psychology, social work or sociology) but this is not essential.