Biography
Freya holds an undergraduate degree in Jurisprudence (Law with Law Studies in Europe) from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Criminology with Distinction from the University of Cambridge. In 2020, she was named proxime accesserunt to the Institute's Manuel Lopez Rey Graduate Prize for outstanding performance. Prior to returning to Cambridge as a PhD student, she completed Bar Vocational Studies with Distinction as a scholar of Gray's Inn and will be called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2022.
Research
Freya's doctoral research, funded by the ESRC and Pembroke College and supervised by Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe and Dr Jonathan Rogers, will explore crime victims' experiences and use of the Victim Personal Statement (VPS) in Crown Court sentencing hearings in England and Wales. She plans to employ qualitative methods to explore the expressive, communicative, and therapeutic potential of the VPS, paying particular attention to ways in which rules of evidence and procedure may conflict with these goals and how such tensions are approached by the court.
More broadly, Freya's core interests include the role of narrative-based victim advocacy in shaping social consciousness and reform; therapeutic jurisprudence and restorative justice; law and emotion; and the law of criminal evidence and sentencing.
