Professor Margaret Malloch

Professor

Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology Colin Bell Building, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Margaret Malloch

About me

My work includes research, writing and activism that aims to challenge processes of criminalisation and punitive responses to ‘crime’ . It questions and explores concepts of 'justice', what this means in practice - and how it is defined by and through collective action.

I am currently working on a Leverhulme Research Fellowship - Memorialising Injustice: Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland (2023-25). This project examines contemporary campaigns to memorialise the women and men accused of, and executed for, the 'crime' of witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Considering how these campaigns influence the campaigners - and their communities - understanding of 'justice' and 'injustice', this project explores the parallels with contemporary injustices. How might we acknowledge and memorialise?

Ongoing work and research interests focus on: Transformative Justice and Abolitionism; Collective aid and community engagement; Gender and the criminal legal system; Confronting Criminalising Processes and Practices; Exploitation and Responses to 'Human Trafficking': constructing 'problems' and policy responses, Creating and sustaining 'communities of recovery'.

Interested in supervising students with a critical approach to theory and methods; expertise in qualitative research and analysis.    Community engagement; Trustee for Charity Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland Co-convenor of Coalition Against Punishment Scotland