Academic & Applied Research

Justice systems, gender, (in)security, (in)equality

Academic

I passed my PhD viva at the London School of Economics in May 2024. My thesis, “‘All I Have to Say’: Epistemic oppression, agency, and structural power in the wake of reforms to gendered violence laws”, is currently embargoed but is available on request. From 2019 to 2024, my PhD was fully funded by the LSE Studentship in Gender, Peace and Security.

Abstract

This thesis traces the afterlives of structural power in the wake of expanded legal protections against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). It is an ethnographic account of victim/survivors’ interactions with law, detailing how their efforts to attain safety and justice interact with structural power configurations through the everyday operations of criminal-legal systems. While contemporary feminist activism has led to substantial changes in laws and policies governing responses to gendered violence, how these legal changes relate to the reproduction and/or disruption of gendered, racialised, economic, and other forms of inequality remain poorly understood. This thesis develops an epistemological framework for studying these structural dynamics in the aftermath of sweeping sets of reforms to laws and policies. It then applies this framework to an embedded ethnography of two policing agencies responsible for implementing new gender-based violence laws. I argue that the intransigent structural inequities that proponents of new laws seek to challenge are mediated through justice officials’ interpretations of victim/survivor testimonies, which in turn informs how they exercise discretionary power in the ‘shadow’ of new laws. This thesis makes theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to understanding how oppressive power configurations might outlive their formal legal structures, while also remaining sensitive to moments when hegemonic reproduction appears to stall or break down. Through embedded ethnography, I show how everyday forms of resistance and feminist experimentation around law can expose the ‘possible’ within the ‘probable’. Even when their transformative potential is thwarted, I suggest these moments warrant greater scholarly attention as emergent sources of change.

During my PhD I worked part time as a Research Officer on the UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub. Prior to joining the LSE I worked at the Global Justice Lab at the University of Toronto. Throughout my thesis I have worked as a research consultant as well as a freelance journalist.

Applied

I consult with organizations doing applied research and investigations in the fields of justice, security, and gender. My research products are always based on mixed methodologies, which typically involve detailed ethnographic work and interviews, as well as quantitative data collection and analysis. I am competent in OSINT techniques and the use of a programming language (Python) for quantitative research. I often use insights from data to inform my ethnographic work, and vice-versa.

I am available for research consulting throughout my PhD, am comfortable working in English and French, and have an intermediate working knowledge of Spanish.

Recent projects include:

  • Open-source investigations, conflict monitoring and information network mapping, and “influence operations”

  • Evaluating the effects of federal “consent decrees” in American police departments

  • Ethnographies of complaints processes for misconduct in security and justice institutions in the US and Canada

  • Developed justice sector evaluation frameworks in collaboration with the Office of the Vice President, Nigeria

  • Developed evaluation frameworks for remand and court effectiveness in the Lahore High Court, Pakistan

  • Researched and contributed to transformative justice programming and impact research in Toronto and New York City

Select reports and presentations:

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