Personal statement
Laura Piacentini PhD, FRSE, Fellow Academianet
BA Sociology (2:1 Honours), MA Criminology (First Class, University of Keele), PgDip Russian Language (University of Strathclyde) and PhD Criminology & Sociology (University of Wales, Bangor).
I am a Criminologist with a background in Sociology and Russian Area Studies. My work, broadly defined, is concerned with punishment and society studies. I joined the University of Strathclyde in 2006 and was based in the Law School. In January 2016 I moved to the School of Social Work and Social Policy (established in 2014).
I am Associate Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and University of Strathclyde Lead with Dr Beth Weaver. www.sccjr.ac.uk
I am the Co-Ed-in-Chief of the leading Criminology journal, Criminology & Criminal Justice with Dr Sarah Armstrong and Professor Michele Burman of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.
In 2014 I was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of Academianet, which is the EU Research Fellowship established by the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel to recognise and support the research leadership of European Women Scholars.
Teaching
I have taught Criminology for over twenty years and have developed interest and expertise across a wide range of criminological subject areas at under-graduate and Masters levels. I have supervised dozens of post-graduate students in Criminology.
In the School of Social Work & Social Policy, Criminology is an integrated part of the first and second year social policy modules and gives students an opportunity to see if this is a subject of interest. From 2017/2018, Criminology will be offered as a third year module (L5328 Emotions, Criminology and Criminal Justice).
Launching in 2018/2019 is the first MSc Criminology (Research Methods) at the School of Social Work and Social Policy:
https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/schoolofsocialworksocialpolicy/newsevents/newmsccriminology/
I can supervise Criminology PhDs and applications for a PhD are welcomed in the following areas: criminology, sociology, prison sociology, international criminal justice systems, Russian criminal justice policy and gender and criminal justice.
Research interests
Research: I am a Criminologist and a highly proficient Russian speaker. I have been publishing in the area of contemporary Russian imprisonment for nearly twenty-five years, having lived and conducted research in numerous prisons. All of my work is multi-disciplinary (involving human geography, Russian Area Studies, history, human rights and political science). I am committed to radical, feminist, creative and theoretically informed research methods. I am the first Westerner to conduct theoretical and empirical research in Russian prisons and my research is recognised as world leading in Criminology.
Research grants
I have been PI or Co-I on many grants and have completed two major ESRC studies on Russian prisons: Prison Labour in Post-Soviet Prisons (1997-2001), and the first major study into women’s imprisonment in Russia in 2011, funded by the ESRC (with Professor Judith Pallot (Oxford) and Dr Dominique Moran (Birmingham)).
ESRC 2018 - 2021 Principal Investigator (circa £735k). The study, 'In the Gulag's Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving prisons in the Former USSR', 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).
AHRC and MRC 2018 - 2020 Co-Investigator (circa £180k): 'The Right to Health in Brazilian and Scottish Prisons' (AHRC and MRC), Professor Sally Haw (PI).
Leverhulme 2015 -2017 Principal Investigator (circa £45k): ‘Towards a Sociology of rights consciousness amongst Russian prisoners’ with Dr Elena Katz at the University of Oxford. See http://prisonersrightsrussia.org.uk
ESRC 2012 – 2014 Co-Investigator (circa £206k): ‘Regulating Justice: The dynamics of compliance and breach in criminal justice social work in Scotland’ with Dr Monica Barry (Law, PI) and Dr Beth Weaver (Social Work and Social Policy, Co-I).
ESRC 2006- 2010 Co-Investigator (circa £253k): 'Women in the Russian Penal System: The role of distance in the theory and practice of imprisonment in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia' with Professor Judith Pallot (Oxford, PI) and Dr Dominique Moran, University of Birmingham, Co-I).
Knowledge Exchange: I have advised the United Nations and NGOs on subjects that include forced labour in prisons and Russian political prisoners and asylum seekers. I have advised the Scottish Parliament on rehabilitation in prisons. I have given papers at diverse Universities including the Universities of Harvard, The Higher Education Institute of Smolensk and Moscow State University. In 2012, I taught at the Central European University, Budapest.
Book Awards: My first book, Surviving Russian Prisons: Punishment, Politics and Economy in Transition won the British Society of Criminology Book of the Year award in 2005. My second book (co-authored with Professor Judith Pallot (Oxford) titled Gender, Geography and Punishment: the Experience of Women in Carceral Russia, won the Heldt Prize for book of the year at the American Association of Slavonic Studies and was nominated for the Book of the Year 2013 by Pushkin House London and the Davis Centre at Harvard University
Article Awards: Theoretical Criminology with Gavin Slade, Article of the Year, 2016, 'Architecture and Attachment: Carceral Collectivism and the problem and prison reform in Russia and Georgia.
In preparation is Prison Netnography and Human Rights in Russian Prisons. Routledge (co-authored with Dr Elena Katz).
Professional activities
- External Examiner, Criminology UK
- Participant
- 1/9/2019
- Recrafting Ethnography
- Participant
- 13/6/2019
- Appointed to Advisory Board, University of Oxford (Event)
- Advisor
- 6/6/2019
- Global Right to Health, Rio de Janiero
- Participant
- 4/5/2019
- British Sociological Association (BSA)
- Participant
- 24/4/2019
- Russian Readings
- Participant
- 15/3/2019
more professional activities
Projects
- In the Gulag's Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving Prisons in the Former Soviet Union
- Piacentini, Laura (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 31-Jan-2021
- 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
- Regulating Justice: The dynamics of compliance and breach in criminal justice social work in Scotland
- Barry, Monica (Principal Investigator) Piacentini, Laura (Co-investigator) Weaver, Beth (Co-investigator)
- "Over 40 per cent of people serving community punishments are subject to breach (not complying with a disposal because of further offending or failing to keep to conditions), yet the processes of compliance and breach are little understood or researched. This study of breach and compliance in Scotland uses quantitative and qualitative data to explore how offenders and professionals interpret compliance and breach; what factors relating to policy, practice and offender characteristics affect compliance and breach; and how breach policy and practice can be enhanced so as to encourage the cessation of offending.
A literature review, the collection of aggregate data nationally and 548 interviews with professionals and offenders in 3 case study areas are the 3 methods to be used. A Research Advisory Group has been set up and Strathclyde University's Ethics Committee has approved the research methods.
The study seeks to impact politically (boosting confidence in criminal justice social work amongst the judiciary, offenders and the wider public), economically (ensuring that social work engagement with offenders works to secure their cooperation and reintegration), and operationally (offering new ways for supervising social workers to engage meaningfully with offenders subject to community-based disposals and post-custodial orders)."
- 01-Jan-2012 - 30-Jan-2015
more projects
Address
Social Policy
Lord Hope Building
Lord Hope Building
Location Map
View University of Strathclyde in a larger map