Category: Uncategorized

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 developing imagination based work with key stakeholders. Collaborators reflected on future possibilities for community-driven research and explored funding and infrastructure support.

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.

📣In September 2025 our research partners Tasha and Kemi from Reformed Development will launch a new empowerment programme. The Mindset Programme is aimed at women with convictions. It will run for 12 weeks from 3rd September and focus on:

✨️Employability.
✨️Goal Setting.
✨️Increased self-belief and confidence.

To register your interest, visit: https://www.reformed16.com/mindset

In July 2025 the Imagining Possible Futures team shared some initial pilot studies at the annual British Society of Criminology conference. In partnership with Experience for Justice, a collective dedicated to promoting radical change in the criminal justice system through prioritising the perspectives of individuals and groups with lived expertise, we:

✨️Shared a co-created Manifesto for Coproducing Knowledge of Criminal Justice. This manifesto was creatively developed through workshops with FACT Liverpool and a design sprint with Interactive Academia.
✨️Highlighted the urgent need to review the (10 year old) BSC ethics framework in partnership with those most impacted.
✨️Shared hopes for a world beyond vulnerability and deficit lenses: toward one which recognises contributors’ agency and provides real choices about forms of involvement, shared networks and ownership, fair pay and inclusivity.

We also discussed a forthcoming collaborative textbook we are working on with scholars and practitioners from Australia, England, Ireland and Scotland.

✨️Kemi and Lucy shared a video of co-authors James and Dwayne and introduced how we have been working on the (autoethnographic) book to date.
✨️Authors highlighted the strengths and challenges of our collaborative approach with writers who have different backgrounds and approaches, and discussed the value of monthly discussions and investing in the group dynamic, so that deeply personal things can be jointly reviewed with both care and rigour.
✨️Authors facilitated a discussion with the audience, which highlighted the importance of themes such as rehabilitation and recovery movements; long term impacts of living with a criminal record; a lack of agreement on what ‘lived experience is’ and how far the lived experience movement is decolonising knowledge production; ethics and inclusivity.

Watch this space for publication news!

In June, 2025, Gill attended the #BASWConf2025 and Birkbeck Social Science Festival.

At BASW, Manchester, she worked alongside Dr Caroline J. Bald Dr Danica Darley Dr Sarah Waite Keith Skerman to amplify the voices and experiences of women impacted by criminalisation and their families.

At Birkbeck, London she located the growth of coproduced criminal justice efforts in historical context and debated the practicalities of coproduced research and practice. We learned more about the important work of Muslim Women in Prison (MWIP) and Revolving Doors.

Thanks to the engaged and engaging audiences.

On Thursday, 8 May, Gill Buck facilitated a workshop at the Criminal Justice Research Symposium, Manchester Metropolitan University: Fostering lived experience in research.

She was joined by Jenni Berlin from User Voice and Line Lerche Morck and Martin Celosse-Andersen from Aarhus University, who discussed: How can research be done safely and responsibly with people directly impacted by the justice system? How can this research and experience be best utilised in creating a system that makes society safer?

The event will brought together academics, policy-makers, practitioners, and people with lived experience to explore the theme of a safer criminal justice system.