
Much of my recent research has focused on the state’s pursuit of crime prevention and public protection. My future research plans will explore the state-citizen relationship to ask what grounds the authority of the state to exercise coercive power over its citizens; what are the legitimacy conditions of its policing function; and what protections are due to the individual against the arbitrary exercise of state power? The historical assumption that these questions relate only to the sovereign state’s prosecution of domestic criminal law is challenged by emerging practices of cross-border law enforcement, resort to immigration law as crime control, and the policing of non-citizens. These developments raise complex legal and political issues beyond the state-citizen relation and invite fresh theorising of the grounds of state authority to police both citizens and non-citizens, to enforce law at and beyond its borders, and to tackle the risks posed by citizens recruited to terrorism overseas by curtailing or depriving them of the rights of citizenship.
- Professor of Criminal Justice / UL, Faculty of Law & Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford (from 2005 to 2016)
- Conjoint Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney (from 2007 to 2017)
- Reader in Criminal Justice / CUF, Faculty of Law & Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford (from 1999 to 2005)
- CUF Lecturer, Faculty of Law & Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford (from 1994 to 1999)
- Lecturer in Law, Law Department, London School of Economics (from 1989 to 1994)
- Prize Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford (from 1987 to 1989)
- State, citizens and social order
- Criminal justice
- Criminal law, criminalization and criminal process
- Philosophy of punishment
- Security and migration control
- Counter-terrorism law and policy
- Changing Contours of Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016), with Mary Bosworth & Carolyn Hoyle (eds)
- Preventive Justice (Oxford University Press, Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice, 2014) with Andrew Ashworth
- Security (Routledge Key Ideas in Criminology Series, 2009)
- Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press Clarendon Law Series, 2004)
- Child Victims: Crime, Impact, and Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 1992) with Jane Morgan
- Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England (Oxford University Press, Oxford Historical Monographs 1991)
- Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law (from 2015)
- Member of the Advisory Board (Fachbeirat) Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg (from 2014 to 2019)
- Member, The British Academy Law Section Committee (from 2014)
- Member, International Advisory Board, Criminal Law Forum (from 2015)
- Member, International Editorial Board, Punishment & Society (from 2013)
- Member, Editorial Board, Criminal Law Review (from 2004)
- Member, Editorial Board, Ultima Ratio: Filosofie del diritto penale (Philosophies of Criminal Law) Editoriale Scientifica (from 2014)
- Member, Editorial Committee, Clarendon Series in Criminology, Oxford University Press (from 1994)
- Risk, Security and Criminal Justice
- Philosophy of Punishment
- Graduate supervision offered in all areas listed
- £509,000 AHRC Award, 2010-2013 for 'Preventive Justice' project with Andrew Ashworth.
- Two year buyout at full economic cost, British Academy Research Readership 2003-2005, 'Security and Justice'.
- £46,000 ESRC Award, 1994-1997 'Social Order, Criminal Justice and the Appeal to Community in Britain and Germany' with Nicola Lacey .
- £120,000, Home Office grant, 1988-1991 'Child Victims' with Jane Morgan.