The project aims to develop a fuller empirical and conceptual account of how punishment and criminalisation reach into family life in Scotland, and of what justice for families could look like. Its objectives are to:

• map how families encounter penal power across the criminal justice process, within and beyond the prison
• document the social harms and inequalities that families experience, in the immediate and longer term
• bring forward perspectives that are missing or under-represented in existing scholarship, for instance relating to lived experience, health or disability, diverse family forms, LGBTQ families, or transnational families or jurisdictions beyond the UK; and identify, with families and the organisations that support them, what justice for families would require in policy and practice.

Research questions

• In what ways does punishment or criminalisation reach into family lives? How is this experienced, and how might it be explained?
• What social harms or inequalities do families experience, and how might these best be conceptualised?
• Which, and whose, perspectives are missing from this body of scholarship, and what do they add to punishment and society studies?
• What could justice look like for families, and what conceptual tools are needed to explore how it might be achieved?

Project scope

The project is a defined programme of work with deliberate room for the successful candidate to shape its emphasis. Every candidate will address the aim, objectives and questions above. Within them, applicants will be invited to propose a focus, for example on one of three strands:

• Beyond the prison: families’ experiences of remand, community sentences, electronic monitoring or supervision after release.
• Missing perspectives: family members and relationships that existing research has overlooked.
• Justice, rights and redress: what recognition, support or accountability families seek, including through children’s rights.
• Harms and inequalities: the financial, emotional, relational and health-related harms families experience, in the immediate and longer term, and how these reflect or deepen existing inequalities of gender, class, race and place, age, disability, or marginalisation of diverse family forms.

PG Certificate in Researcher Professional Development

PhD students at Strathclyde are required to undertake the PG Certificate in Researcher Professional Development, which is a formal credit-bearing academic award.

The award recognises and rewards the wide array of skills and experiences that postgraduate research students achieve during their PhD research.

Further information

The student will join the Department’s criminal and social justice researchers and SCCJR (Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research), with collaborative links to CYCJ (Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice) and SIPR (Scottish Institute for Policing Research. The Department hosted the largest British Society of Criminology conference on record in 2024, and its MSc Criminology and Social Policy and PhD community are integral to the thriving research culture. In 2026 Strathclyde was named Scottish University of the Year and UK runner-up in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide and was ranked 3rd in Scotland for Social Policy (Complete University Guide 2027).   

Interviews process:

Applications will be reviewed by a selection panel after the closing date and incomplete applications will not be considered.

• Applicants shortlisted for interview will be notified week commencing 23 November 2026
• Interviews will be conducted week commencing 30 November 2026
• The successful applicant must be able to commence study on 1 January or 1 April 2027