Research

Relational Justice

Improving the criminal justice response to relational offending such as domestic abuse, rape and serious sexual offending, stalking and harassment and coercive control.

Current projects in this space include, building the first National Operating Model for the police investigation for rape and serious sexual offending (which has been implemented across England and Wales), working with the CPS to improve the prosecution of rape, serious sexual offending and domestic abuse, pioneering the Court Observation Project in London (working with Justice is Now to train students to capture the use of rape myths in court).

Public Justice

Analysing political, cultural and historical contexts shaping policy developments, narratives of crime and crisis, moral panics, and ’storying’ law/communication.

Projects include the development of protocols and frameworks to improve the reporting of humanitarian crises and working with women in prison to explore the potential for victim focussed crime reporting.

Carceral Injustice

Interrogating crime control as a response to social inequality and ethnic disproportionality, , looking at health inequality, incarceration and wellbeing, housing precocity and carceral responses to immigration, violence and crime (including youth and urban violence) with an intersectional lens.

Current projects include:

• working with partners to introduce policy change resulting in a presumption against custodial remand for women
• producing policy guidance for magistrates on deferred sentencing
• working directly with refugees and people seeking asylum in North London to address difficulties with the transition out of asylum accommodation.

With our award winning Law In Real Life clinic we run the City Innocence Project, giving our students the opportunity to assist victims of miscarriages of justice. The Law In Real Life clinic also runs the IPP Appeals service, where students are supervised to investigate and challenge IPP prison sentences (Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection).

Criminal Law and Procedural Justice

Working to improve the criminal law, criminal justice process and in particular policing, arrest, bail and remand, jury trials, disclosure and evidence, sentencing.

We are currently working with the Law Commission on the three part homicide review, with the Sentencing Council on the ongoing strategic consultation feeding into the development of the Sentencing Council 2027-30 strategic objectives, contributing to the CPS 2025-30 VAWG policy, helping to develop the CPS prosecution guidance for both the Coercive or Controlling Behaviour  offence and sexual offences more generally.

International and Comparative Justice

Looking at accountability for mass atrocities and genocide, the relationship between law, history and accountability in international criminal courts and tribunals, and the potential for rehumanisation as an approach to move beyond polarity and past trauma.

Current projects include the creation of a community based Truth Commission for the Ezidi genocide which will hear oral evidence from survivor experts and specialists, working with the Human Rights Council on justice for Daesh atrocities, working to achieve gender parity at the International Court of Justice.