Mark Alexander

  • Rethinking the ‘pains of imprisonment’ – A phenomenology of suffering and resilience in captivity
Mark Alexander

About

Mark is a part-time PhD candidate, supervised by Professor Ben Crewe. He previously completed an MSc in Social Research Methods at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2025, where he conducted an exploratory qualitative study comparing experiences of emerging from COVID-19 lockdown with experiences of release from prison. He was awarded the Longford's Trust's Patrick Pakenham Award in 2016, and holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Law.

Alongside his academic work, Mark has contributed to calls for evidence from the Law Commission and the Justice Select Committee in relation to the criminal appeals system and prison reform. He currently sits on the Steering Group for Unlock the Vote, campaigning for universal enfranchisement - and is also a member of the Criminal Record Research and Reform Network, which recently tabled amendments to the Sentencing Bill.

Outside academia, Mark is a classically trained musician with an LRSM from the Royal Schools of Music. A former music scholar at Rugby School, he was also among the school’s first Arnold Foundation scholars.

Research

Mark’s research explores the lived experience of imprisonment, with a particular focus on suffering, resilience, identity, and the sensory dimensions of captivity. Drawing on qualitative, phenomenological and autoethnographic methodologies, he seeks to develop a more nuanced conceptual framework for understanding the ‘pains of imprisonment’, examining how punishment is felt and interpreted by those subjected to it.

Using his own lived experience as an analytic lens, Mark’s doctoral work explores how perception, emotion and memory shape experiences of confinement, and how these insights can inform questions of legitimacy, proportionality and the ethical limits of punishment within contemporary penal systems.

Through collaborative and co-productive research with people who have experience of imprisonment, Mark aims to better articulate dimensions of captivity that are often difficult to observe, describe, or measure from outside the prison environment.