Criminology and Criminal Justice Through the Lens of Queer Theory: Roundtable Discussion

We are delighted to invite you to a Roundtable Conversation on Exploring Criminology and Criminal Justice through the Lens of Queer Theory and/or Queerness. This event is held on the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia and is hosted by the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Law and the Justice and Society Research Centre (at the Institute of Criminology). This interdisciplinary discussion will draw on research from a range of contexts to reflect on how queer theoretical and methodological approaches can enrich scholarship in criminology and criminal justice studies.

The speakers are Sharon Cowan (University of Edinburgh), SM Rodriguez (London School of Economics), and Aube Tollu (Lund University). The event will take place in Sidgwick Hall in Newnham College from 2pm to 4:30pm on Friday, 16th May.  The discussion will be followed by a drinks reception to provide an informal opportunity for interaction and collaboration. 

Despite the increasing rate at which scholars working on criminology and criminal justice have begun to engage with queer theory, the ‘queering’ of criminology is far from complete. Frequently academic literature adopts an ‘add and stir’ approach, integrating the experiences of queer victims, offenders and practitioners. This stops short of an abolitionist approach - embraced by radical queer activists and scholars - that challenges the most fundamental concepts in criminology and criminal justice, including crime, deviance, and punishment. We thus also want to move beyond analysing how individuals who deviate from dominant gender and sexual norms are treated by the criminal justice system and explore how the system itself shapes dominant conceptions of sexuality and gender intertwined with racialised and class-based social norms.  

Against this background, our hybrid Roundtable Discussion will identify, analyse and celebrate queer contributions to criminology and criminal justice studies. This topic is both ambitious and urgent, given the historical and ongoing criminalization of queer people and the intensification of punitive approaches to justice. LGBTQ+ existence is so often deemed undesirable and impossible, which is why we are embracing the beautiful impossibility of queerness and highlighting its contributions to scholarship and abolitionist praxis.  

To view information about the building’s accessibility, please see the AccessAble’s guide. We will provide live BSL interpretation for this event and you are welcome to raise other accessibility concerns with us through the registration form.

We are grateful to our funders: the British Society of Criminology, the Social and Legal Studies journal and Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Sharon Cowan (she/her) 

Professor Sharon Cowan is based at the University of Edinburgh. Her recent and current projects include a national empirical project - along with Helen Baillot (Scottish Refugee Council), and Vanessa Munro (Nottingham) - looking at the way in which women asylum claimants whose applications are based on a claim of rape, are treated by the Asylum and Immigration Appeal Tribunal. Along with Dr Chloe Kennedy (Edinburgh) and Professor Munro (Warwick), she is a co-editor of the Scottish Feminist Judgments Project. Sharon is presently working on a comparative socio-legal project looking at the impact of law on transgender people and a Scottish Government funded project examining the operation of ‘rape shield’ legislation in Scottish sexual offences trials. 

SM Rodriguez (they/them) 

Dr. S.M. Rodriguez is scholar-activist and Assistant Professor of Gender, Rights and Human Rights. Their research advances the understanding of the impact of racialisation, criminalisation, ableism, and the imposition of gendered and sexual control on people of African descent. In their first monograph, The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda (2019), they analysed the effects of transnational advocacy on Ugandan LGBTI (kuchu) organising during the four-year period in which the Ugandan government considered the “Kill the Gays Bill”. In their current research they explore the globalisation of abolitionist feminist praxis and examine the political processes involved in or countering gender and sexual identification.  

Aube Tollu (they/them) 

Aube’s PhD thesis Queer Intimacies: Rethinking Epistemology of Conducting Research with Jihadist Group Members looked at French jihadists' experiences of romantic relationships in their journey towards joining a violent social movement.  They aim to explore the lived experiences of participants to shed the light on the relationship between affect, emotions regarding romantic relationships, community building and the making of subcultural political groups. They take a critical approach to terrorism studies, challenging the reductionist narratives framing jihadist group members as deviant/monstrous; arguing for nuanced interpretations that account for the complexity of their participants’ lives. Their work draws from social psychology, cultural criminology, phenomenology, feminist and critical race scholarship and the broad tradition of ethnographic enquiries.