Professor Laura Piacentini
Social Policy
Personal statement
Laura Piacentini is a multi-award-winning Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
A Russian speaker, Laura is the first Westerner to conduct empirical and theoretical research in post-USSR jails. Her doctorate was the first research council funded PhD on incarceration in contemporary Russia and she has been researching and publishing on this subject for nearly thirty years since then. She is also a trained sociologist engaged in multi-disciplinary research that includes fields such as human geography, political science, law, and criminology and has been Co-I or PI on numerous studies of post-Soviet penal culture. With Professor Slade, Laura is the lead on the major prison study funded by ESRC: “In the Gulag’s Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving prisons in the former USSR”. This unique project seeks to produce global criminology’s first empirical and theoretical study of Russian penal culture. In 2014, Professor Piacentini was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and appointed Fellow at "AcademiaNet" for leading European Women Scholars, established by Angela Merkel then the Chancellor of Germany.
Laura co-founded the research cluster Criminal and Social Justice at the School of Social Work and Social Policy with Professor Beth Weaver in 2016 and led on the University’ of Strathclyde’s partnership in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research that same year where she is also Associate Director www.sccjr.ac.uk
Between 2015 and 2020, she was a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the leading Criminology journal, Criminology & Criminal Justice.
Laura’s next book published by Routledge is out in April 2022. It is called ‘The Virtual Reality of Imprisonment in Russia; “Preparing myself for prison in a contested human rights landscape’ and it is co-authored with Dr Elena Katz (Oxford and Helsinki).
On Twitter:
In the Gulag's Shadow (ESRC): @InGulag
Criminal and Social Justice cluster: @CrimSocJust
Personal account@LauraPiac8
Area of Expertise
- Global Criminology
- Sociology and Social Theory
- Prisons in the former Soviet Union
- International prisons and penal reform
- Prison ethnography and qualitative research methods
- Human rights in prisons
Prize And Awards
- Best Educational Film at the Christian Film Festival for The Long Way Back
- Recipient
- 1/11/2021
- Best Documentary Film 2021, Christian Film Festival USA for The Long Way Back
- Recipient
- 1/11/2021
- Article of The Year, 2015 for the international journal, 'Theoretical Criminology'
- Recipient
- 15/2/2016
- Book of the Year, 2013
- Recipient
- 12/11/2013
- Book of the Year, 2005
- Recipient
- 7/7/2005
Publications
- East is East? Beyond the Global North and Global South in criminology
- Piacentini Laura, Slade Gavin
- The British Journal of Criminology Vol 64, pp. 521-537 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azad048
- Who recounts the Stalinist past? Mnemonic roles, acts of remembering and life-scripts in Russian families
- Slade Gavin, Turlubekova Zhaniya, Piacentini Laura
- Current Sociology (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921241238431
- Ghosts of the Gulag : negotiating spectres of the penal past in Northern Russia
- Slade Gavin, Piacentini Laura, Kravtsova Alena
- The British Journal of Criminology Vol 64, pp. 17-33 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azad013
- Unlikely downsizers : the prison service's role in reversing mass incarceration in Kazakhstan
- Slade Gavin, Trochev Alexei, Piacentini Laura
- Theoretical Criminology Vol 27, pp. 573-596 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806231177020
- The Virtual Reality of Imprisonment in Russia : "Preparing Myself for Prison" in a Contested Human Rights Landscape
- Piacentini Laura, Katz Elena M
- (2022)
- Human rights in Russia in the shadow of the gulag : penal transitology as bureaucratic drama
- Piacentini Laura
- Law & Social Inquiry (2022)
Teaching
Laura has taught Criminology for nearly thirty years and over this time, she has developed expertise across a wide range of criminological subject areas at UG and PG levels and has supervised dozens of post-graduate students in Criminology.
She leads on all Criminology teaching at the School of Social Work and Social Policy where Criminology is integrated into first, second and third year social policy modules.
Launching in January 2022 will be a new and exciting MSc in Criminology and Social Policy, which will be taught by a range of staff with expertise in Criminology, Social Work and Social Policy at the School of Social Work and Social Policy.
Laura can supervise Criminology PhDs and applications for a PhD are welcomed in the subjects listed above.
Research Interests
Research:
Laura is recognised, through publications, impact, elite grant capture and academic awards as a world leading Criminologist. She has been publishing in the area of contemporary Russian imprisonment since 1995, having lived and conducted research in numerous prisons. She is a trained Russian speaker.
All her work multi-disciplinary and involves substantial leadership of international teams involving the subjects of sociology, Russian Area Studies, history, human rights and political science. I am committed to radical, feminist, creative and theoretically informed research methods.
Research grants
Laura has been PI or Co-I on many grants and have completed several major ESRC studies on Russian prisons:
Grants funded by the ESRC
- "In The Gulag's Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Percieving Prisons in the Former USSR)" (2018-2021), Principal Investigator (£735k). The study is the first study of its kind in world Criminology. The team includes Dr Gavin Slade (Lead Co-I and Associate Professor, University of Nazarbayev, Astana, Kazakhstan); Professor Elena Olmenchenko (Professor of Sociology, Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg), and Professor Alexei Trochev (Professor of Criminology, University of Nazarbayev, Astana, Kazakhstan).
- "Regulating Justice: The dynamics of compliance and breach in criminal justice social work in Scotland", Co-I, with Dr Monica Barry (Law, PI) and Dr Beth Weaver (Social Work and Social Policy, Co-I), 2012-2014, £206k.
- "Women in the Russian Penal System: The role of distance in the theory and practice of imprisonment in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia"(ESRC, 2006-2010, £253,000, with Professor Judith Pallot (Oxford, PI) and Dr Dominique Moran, University of Birmingham, Co-I).
- "Work to Live: The Function of Prison Labour in Russian Prisons" (1997-2001) (ESRC, PI, £45,000);
Grants funded by the AHRC
- "The Right to Health in Brazilian and Scottish Prisons", 2018-2020 (AHRC and MRC, £180,000), Co-I and Professor Sally Haw (PI).
Grants funded by the Leverhulme Trust
- "Towards a Sociology of rights consciousness amongst Russian prisoners" (Principal Investigator, £45,000).
Knowledge Exchange: Laura has advised the United Nations and NGOs on subjects that include forced labour in prisons and Russian political prisoners and asylum seekers. She has advised the Scottish Parliament on rehabilitation in prisons and given papers at diverse international Universities including the University of Nazarbayev, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, the University of Harvard, The Higher Education Institute of Smolensk and Moscow State University. She has taught at Russian prison service training colleges, Russian police colleges and at the Central European University, Budapest.
Professional Activities
- "Farmers Have No Freedom” (Uzbek Forum report on land, labour and farmers rights)
- Advisor
- 1/6/2025
- "Situating the ‘Global East’ in Southernizing and Decolonizing Movements in Socio-Legal Studies"
- Organiser
- 17/4/2024
- A two event with leading international scholars working on the Gulag Echoes project, and on related projects, led by the Aleksanteri Institute Helsinki.
- Participant
- 25/3/2024
- Current Sociology (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 14/3/2024
- The British Journal of Criminology (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 1/2/2024
- Developing collaboration and action between the Uzbek Forum for Human rights and Strathclyde University
- Organiser
- 5/5/2023
Projects
- COVID-19 Justice as Penal Justice: Examining the Impacts of the Pandemic on Prisons in Canada and Scotland
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator)
- I am co-investigating (with Dr Sarah Turnbull of the University of Waterloo) the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on prisons in Canada and Scotland, focusing specifically on issues of systemic inequalities. This project, COVID-19 Justice as Penal Justice: Examining the Impacts of the Pandemic on Prisons in Canada and Scotland, is funded by a Strathclyde and Waterloo Joint Transatlantic Partnership Award.
- 01-Jan-2022 - 30-Jan-2023
- In the Gulag's Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving Prisons in the Former Soviet Union
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 01-Jan-2023
- In the Gulag's Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving Prisons in the Former USSR
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator) Slade, Gavin (Principal Investigator) Olmenchenko, Elena (Co-investigator) Trochev, Alexei (Co-investigator)
- This a major (circa £735k), new comparative study of two of the largest penal systems of the former Soviet Union: Russia and Kazakhstan. It advances knowledge of one of the most extraordinary systems of penal power, the Gulag, and seeks to understand it's legacies today in policy, in practice and in feelings and attitudes to punishment in this udner-researched world region.
- 01-Jan-2018 - 01-Jan-2021
- Right to Health in Prison AHRC-MRC Global Public Health Partnership Call Oct 2017
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 31-Jan-2019
- A Sociology of Rights Consciousness amongst Prisoners in Russia
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2015 - 28-Jan-2017
- AHRC - Doctoral Training Partnership Scotland | Gavin, Mhairi
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator) McDiarmid, Claire (Co-investigator) Gavin, Mhairi (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2014 - 22-Jan-2018