News & Events

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…