Elizabeth Gurian - Biography

	Contact Details
	Email: eag35@cam.ac.uk

Murder and serial murder are rare occurrences that typically account for less than one per cent of all crimes in many countries, including England and Wales and the United States. Despite this low occurrence, homicide continues to be an area of intense study, although questions remain regarding differences between female and male offenders, particularly with respect to motivation, method, victim selection, sentencing patterns, and overall perceptions. In particular, while the number of female perpetrated murders is lower than the number of male perpetrated murders, little research has been devoted to the subject. It is also unknown whether the lower numbers are due to underestimation, under-reporting, or poor quality of information. Current legal definitions (and associated stereotypes) of murder and serial murder may also create excuses and rationales based on misconceptions about each gender. These excuses and rationales may also produce a tendency for the criminal justice system to treat women differently from men in cases of murder (for example, use of the battered woman’s syndrome, learned helplessness or the Stockholm Syndrome as defence).

My doctoral research aims to answer these questions through statistical analyses of different homicide patterns of the offenders within my sample (for example, method, victim selection, timeframe, motive, and mobility), drawing distinctions between partnered and solo, serial and single-incident, homicide offenders from a range of different countries. This research expands what is currently known and understood about female homicide offenders; women who murder alone have very different murder patterns from those who murder with a partner. Additionally, in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of female homicide offenders, my research examines media and criminal justice perspectives using an integrated multiple method approach. The study combines analysis of news articles, court documents and interviews with lawyers to explore women’s agency in crimes of extreme violence.

Download Elizabeth's C.V. as a PDF document.

Adobe Reader is required to view .pdf files. It can be downloaded from the Adobe website.