Dr Rachel Vipond

Profile

Areas of Expertise

• Youth Justice 
• Risk and Professional Decision Making
• Probation and Youth Offending Team Practices
• Gender and Crime (specifically girls and crime)
• Qualitative Research Methods
• Prisons and Prison Policy

Brief Biography

I completed my PhD (at Lancaster University) in June 2015. It is an interdisciplinary ethnographic research project exploring risk in the youth justice system. It involved 14 months of fieldwork at several youth offending teams across the north of England collecting different types of data including interview data and observational fieldnotes exploring how the Scaled Approach (a risk based policy) has impacted on the youth justice system.

Between 2013 and 2016, I was the Co-Chair of the British Society of Criminology (BSC) Postgraduate Committee. The Postgraduate Committee is a sub-committee of the BSC and comprises research students and academic staff from universities across the UK. I have recently been elected the Executive Secretary of the British Society of Criminology, a position which will allow for me to keep supporting the work of the society. I am also a member of the BSC Youth Criminology/Youth Justice Network and the Howard League for Penal Reform Early Career Academics Network.

I have a number of years' teaching experience on a range of courses which focus on criminological theory and its application as well as research methods. I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Teaching Focus

• Youth Justice
• Criminological Theory
• Prisons
• Qualitative Research Methods