Summer 2025 News Round Up

We invite you to join us for our 2025 Michaelmas Term Seminars.  Online or in person attendance is available.  Our programme of events, summarised in the table below, includes four seminars.  

On the 30 October, alumni of the Institute are invited to join us afterwards for a buffet reception.  Click here for further information.

The 26th annual Nigel Walker Lecture took place in May with Professor Lesley McAra’s lecture ‘Justice in an Age of Unreason: Why Criminology Matters’.  Lesley McAra is Professor of Penology in the School of Law, University of Edinburgh. 

The year 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Nigel Walker’s book: Crime and Punishment in Britain (University of Edinburgh press).  The lecture addresses the central question raised by Walker’s preface: what should be the concerns of criminology today?  Listen to the recording here.

We were also delighted to welcome Institute alumnus Nicholas Goldrosen to receive the 2025 Nigel Walker prize.  The Nigel Walker Prize is awarded annually for an outstanding PhD in the field of Criminology, completed by a member of the University of Cambridge

Lord James Timpson OBE, a long-term supporter of the Institute and current Minister of State for Prisons, delivered the keynote speech at the 27th Annual Bill McWilliams Lecture in July.   Held in the recently refurbished United Reformed Church in Cambridge, tickets sold out quickly with over 400 people attending in person and online.  The Timpson bursaries have benefited many of our past and current MSt penology students and we are grateful for the ongoing support.   Listen to the recording here. 

Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Honorary Research Fellow, Roy King, sadly passed away on 3 June 2025 at the age of 85.   Roy was a student on the Institute’s second Diploma course in 1965 graduating with distinction.  His research interests  focussed on super-maximum-security custody around the world with roles including acting as an adviser to Amnesty International on investigations into conditions on death row in the USA and juvenile institutions in Brazil .  Roy returned to the Institute (2004 – 2011) in the role of Director for the MSt in Applied Criminology, Penology and Management.  Read the obituary here. 

Congratulations to Institute Alumna and academic KyleTreiber, who has been promoted to Professor.

Professor Treiber is Deputy Director of the multilevel, longitudinal Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+) and has been responsible for developing the neurocognitive and biopsychological dimensions of the study as well as its guiding theoretical framework, Situational Action Theory (SAT). Due to the nature of PADS+ as a multi-method study of people, social environments and their interaction, Professor Treiber has experience in developmental and social ecological research methods and analytical techniques, and is particularly interested in situating neuropsychological factors in a wider behavioural context. This extends into the domain of cross-comparative research and tests of SAT around the world.

Read the latest PADS+ article here.

In July and September we welcomed our policing and penology students to Cambridge for their Master's course block weeks. 

Applications for our MSt courses are open until 2 December 2025.  Let your colleagues know about your experiences on the courses and encourage them to apply.  

Read our recent interviews with MSt (policing) Affiliate Lecturer, Jacqueline Sebire, and current MSt (policing) student Melissa Wighton, who works for the London Police Service, Ontario

Congratulations to Institute students who organised two exceptional summer conferences with an interdisciplinary focus.

• In April, Criminology in an Interdisciplinary Age was the third PhD conference bringing together scholars from Criminology and related fields.  With keynote speaker Professor Shadd Muruna (University of Liverpool), delegates explored criminological questions through an interdisciplinary lens.
• Our MPhil students held a student-led criminology conference: Beyond the Books in May, with an interdisciplinary perspective.  The conference provided opportunities to meet those with similar research interests and the application of criminology on various topics.

During a final phase of building works at the Institute, the entrance to the Radzinowicz Library has been redesigned to include a purpose-built collaboration space for students.  

Alumni are welcome to use the Radzinowicz library, please contact the Librarian at least 48  hours before your visit to check that they can accommodate you. criminology@lib.cam.ac.uk