Louise Brangan

I joined the School of Social Work and Social Policy in 2021 as a Chancellor's Fellow, having previously been a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Stirling and been the Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the Howard League Scotland. I completed my PhD in Criminology at the University of Edinburgh in 2017. In 2015 I was a visiting Fulbright scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC Berkeley.

In 2021 I recieved the best article prize in Theoretical Criminology, and my first article, 'Civilising Imprisonment', won the British Society of Criminology's best article prize for a paper produced by a new scholar.

My research interests focus on the sociology of punishment, particularly comparative and historical study of penal culture and penal politics. My recent book, The Politics of Punishment, is an examination of penality in Ireland and Scotland from 1970 until the end of the 1990s. It shines a light on their unfolding penal cultures, showing the startling differences in how people were punished and why. 

I am beginning work on a ESRC New Investigator funded study of Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes, "Mass Decarceration: A critical social history'. Read a short synopsis of the proposal here.

I welcome PhD applications concerned with penal culture and penal politics, comparative criminology, and the social history of punishment.