Category: News

In April, Gill spoke at the European Conference for Social Work Research (ECSWR) in Aberdeen. Gill and colleague Dr Danica Darley from the University of Sheffield presented their reflective chapter “Lived experience informed criminal justice social work in England: A case of generative justice?”, which has been published in The Routledge International Handbook of Criminal Justice Social Work.

Social work internationally is rooted in solidarity with people facing social disadvantage, yet those with lived experience of criminalisation remain largely excluded from shaping the knowledge and practice that affect their lives. We argued that this gap undermines the profession’s commitment to inclusion. In response, we explored how Generative Justice can help reimagine a more equitable approach. Drawing on lived experience-informed practice in criminal justice settings, we highlighted how peer-led and co-productive models can build trust, inspire hope, and strengthen services, while also acknowledging the ethical complexities involved.

Using the seven principles of Generative Justice, we showed how social work can move beyond risk-averse, paternalistic systems toward practices grounded in recognition, reciprocity, and collective change. Ultimately, we called for dismantling structural barriers and centring experiential knowledge to transform social work into a more just, inclusive, and socially responsive profession.

In April, Paula visited beautiful Bali to place lived experience research and activism on the world stage.

Joined by Dwayne Antojado from Adelaide University, Donna Arrondelle from the University of Southampton and colleagues from Penal Reform International, Paula represented the team at the 7th World Congress on Probation and Parole, sharing emerging research findings, policy-based activities and advocating for meaningful roles for people with lived experience in probation and parole.

Talks were aimed at sharing emerging research findings, policy-based activities and advocating for meaningful roles for people with lived experience in probation and parole.

Gill also popped in (virtually) to give an overview of the history of lived experience led criminal justice in the UK and Ireland.

To read more about this work, visit Dwayne’s blog, or the team’s history article.

In February 2026, team members attended the Flip of the Coin and REALITIES Conference, Alness, Scottish Highlands to share findings from a photovoice study of Flip of the Coin, a women-led and lived experience driven community organisation in Scotland.

Founded and led by a woman who wanted to create the community she herself had lacked before and after imprisonment, Flip of the Coin is rooted in the belief that lived experiences, particularly of adversity, disconnection and transition can offer important insights to help shape healthier communities.

Set up in 2024, the organisation works to improve people’s wellbeing, confidence and sense of connection through creative, nature based community activities.

The conference included talks from Lucy Campbell, Flip founder, who introduced the work of the organisation, their partners Dr Marisa De Andrade, who introduced the REALITIES research programme, Dr Kath Jones, who has developed a creative GP consulting pathway and network, and collaborator Cecile Taylor MSC who presented a beautiful, coproduced photovoice-collage of the community health benefits of Flip of the Coin.

Gill Buck introduced visual findings from a UKRI funded photovoice study of Flip’s lived experience-led community work. The themes from our study, which were codeveloped with people working with Flip of the Coin included Nature, Creativity, Growing Together, Nourishment, Family and New Pathways Forward.

These themes revealed how Flip created conditions for people to grow, feel alive and thrive.

Rather than organising around risks or labels, Flip was built as a shared community space where people meet as human beings.

Through creativity, walks in nature and shared relationships, Flip offered care, connection and belonging in place of judgement. Growth happened collectively, within communities, through trust and mutual support. Creativity restored confidence, while pathways forward became clear through a growing sense of agency.

The organisation therefore provides a blueprint for re-thinking community health and justice. By rooting support in lived experiences of adversity and organising around strengths and belonging rather than deficiency, Flip shows how environments themselves can be structured to nurture growth, connections to others and rootedness in place.

At the start of December, Emma, Paula and Gill attended the very first “Becoming an Imagination Activist” weekend training at Hawkwood College, Stroud, Led by Phoebe Tickell, they embarked on an immersive journey of the imagination, learning new techniques for imagining different futures.

Together we imagined a future world where prisons had been closed and were now places of dark tourism. The revenue funds healing circles and community learning spaces where skilled healing practitioners take a restorative approach to harms. These places are based in nature, connecting people to their environment. As a result, people feel they belong and take care of these places. Love is now one of the most important lessons taught in schools. People master empathy, self regulation and care for self and others. Every street and locality is responsible for the people they live alongside. Local harms are addressed by collective healing circles, where people decide together what repairs are needed. This includes harmful business practices. Those neighbouring the businesses vote and hold leaders accountable.

Our fellow activists reimagined a range of other beautiful futures, including a future education system designed around diverse needs and strengths, future cities which prioritise human and non-human wellbeing, and future food and energy systems focused on sustainability and ethics.

These techniques and practices will be incorporated into forthcoming future-focused work on the project.

Members of the Experience for Justice Collective (E4J), a key partner in Imagining Possible Futures, gathered at the University of Liverpool for a two-day workshop to shape a shared research agenda and spark momentum for a major community-led research proposal.

4–5 November 2025

Building on earlier gatherings, including the inaugural Sheffield symposium (2023) and E4J presentations at the British Society of Criminology conferences (2024 and 2025), the workshop explored research priorities related to participatory and coproduced criminal justice research.

Participants worked collaboratively to refine the group’s research ambitions and priorities. Sessions included short presentations, group discussions, and thematic exercises designed to strengthen shared principles and develop plans.

Guest contributor Emma Murray (Imagining Possible Futures and Anglia Ruskin University) shared insights on imagination-based work. Drawing inspiration from the work of Shaun Leonardo, Lori Lobenstine and colleagues’ Ideas, Arrangements, Effects: Systems Design and Social Justice. and initiatives like ‘Challenge Labs’ (see e.g., Policy Lab; Holmberg and colleagues, 2015), she highlighted the power of art and collective storytelling as vehicles for building more just and connected communities. Central to the conversation was the concept of reparative infrastructuring (Crean and Murray, forthcoming), which is grounded in radical imagination and radical hope; inviting stakeholders not only to envision alternative futures, but actively construct the frameworks that make those futures possible.

Outcomes

The workshop:

• Agreed a set of shared priorities and broad research questions.
• Mapped potential funding routes and next steps for proposal development.
• Strengthened the Collective’s capacity and networks for advancing its research agenda.

E4J will continue this work through follow-up meetings in 2026.

For 11 years, our Co-Investigator Emma Murray has volunteered as a Criminologist in Residence at FACT Liverpool.

This beautiful reflection considers what she has learned from this time, and what she will bring to ongoing and future collaborations.

The work articulates one of Emma’s superpowers: “to curate criminology… [is] to think of how to bring criminology into [the] gallery context… Curation is about creating conditions in which the relationship between artworks, artists and audiences can produce new insights and possibilities”

As part of our Imagining Possible Futures study, Emma is now applying her learning from Resolution to co-develop strengths‑based resources with people impacted by justice systems. These resources will support imagination based problem solving to build more inclusive learning and support services within and beyond criminal justice.

See more on Resolution here: https://lnkd.in/enmGt9Tv

In September 2025, Dr Gill Buck spoke at an international event, co-facilitated by Sr Caroline Acha, Coordinator, Victim Offender Prison Care Support (VOPS), Cameroon.

Gill presented a history of lived experience led criminal justice in the UK and Ireland, informed by the historical work from the Imagining Possible Futures study. She then focused on empirical evidence of peer mentoring in a UK context.

The event was attended by people who live and work in prison in Cameroon. The discussion explored ways that peer mentoring could work in the local context, in ways that ensure people are well trained, supported and safe in their work. Resources were shared regarding different kinds of training provision, empirical evidence of UK schemes and restorative approaches to re-entry post imprisonment.

📖You can access Gill’s open access publications on peer-mentoring here.

📚 More open access resources on Lived Experience Criminal Justice research are available here.

On Friday 19th September Paula, Kemi and Gill spoke at an event hosted by Penal Reform International in Amsterdam. The discussion aimed to explore and advance the meaningful inclusion of people with lived experience in prison reform efforts, in line with international human rights standards.

Gill drew on historical research by the research team to outline the long history of criminalised people shaping penal reform. She also introduced the evidence base for peer supported provision in contemporary justice systems.

Kemi talked about the therapeutic nature of her work with Reformed CIC, the discrimination that she faced as a Black woman coming out of prison, and how despite the diversity of people in prison, a driving connective thread is poverty. Kemi advocated support that is therapeutic and empowering, not just transactional.

Colleagues Scott, Donna and Dwayne provided co-constructed definitions, highlighted the importance of inclusive education and research, and the need to meaningfully include people who indirectly experience criminalisation including the children of people who go to prison.

Paula summarised the group’s contributions, locating them within a UK context of lived experience activism, before opening dialogue with the audience.

Thanks again to Dwayne Antojado for facilitating this work and Penal Reform International for being wonderful hosts.

👉 Watch the event here: https://lnkd.in/eZUzTp4H

In September 2025, team members attended the European Society of Criminology conference in Athens, Greece.

Gill Buck, along with Professor Ben Crewe from the University of Cambridge, were invited to an ‘Author meets Critic’ session. They responded to the excellent book ‘Prisoner Leaders‘, by Paula Harriott and her colleague Marion Vannier, frrom the University of Manchester.

Image: Paula Harriott with the Prisoner Leaders book.

The book examines prisoner leadership, including its qualities, conditions, and potentials, through co-authored chapters by academics and those with lived experience. In doing so it challenges assumptions about leadership while addressing themes such as gender, race, drugs, violence, work, and faith.

Critics praised the book for centering the voices of hidden prisoner leaders, highlighting their skills, resilience, and contributions to prison communities, while also noting its impact in policy spaces, including the UK parliament. They also raised questions about transparency in collaborations and deeper engagement with prisoner writings and historical traditions of prisoner-led reform.

The session proved a useful forum to critically reflect on a text closely aligned with our own research aims, and to share some of our own emerging findings on the history of prisoner activism.

Image: Gill Buck and Paula Harriott in Athens.

Gill Buck and colleague Philippa Tomczak from the University of Nottingham have published a new article. It demonstrates:

⚠️Women in prison have key insights into problems and solutions related to imprisonment but their voices are often peripheral, or they are constructed as ‘pathetic’.

💡There is unrealised potential for prison regulators to network women in prison and families with other regulators (e.g., voluntary sector) to deepen understanding of problems for broader social benefit.

🧩Prison regulators across scales hold potential to illuminate harms of imprisonment and influence alternatives, yet criminologists rarely engage with these mechanisms.

The paper analyses prisoners’ participatory roles in the ‘transformative’ Corston Report (2007) and The Corston Report 10 Years On, using actor-network-theory to guide document analysis. They reflect on Corston’s calls for a radically different, woman-centred approach to criminal justice.

Read the article here…