Rachel Claire Vipond

• Youth Justice
• Risk and Professional Decision Making
• Probation and Youth Offending Team Practices
• Gender and Crime (specifically girls and crime)
• Qualitative Research Methods

I completed my PhD (at Lancaster University) in June 2015. It is an interdisciplinary ethnographic research project exploring risk in the youth justice system. It involved 14 months of fieldwork at several youth offending teams across the north of England collecting different types of data including interview data and observational fieldnotes exploring how the Scaled Approach (a risk based policy) has impacted on the youth justice system. Prior to commencing my PhD, I gained my MRes degree and undergraduate degree at Lancaster University. My MRes dissertation involved working with Lancashire Constabulary on evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the Integrated Offender Management project; my undergraduate dissertation focused on exploring the use of custody in the youth justice system in England.

I am the Co-Chair of the British Society of Criminology (BSC) Postgraduate Committee. The Postgraduate Committee is a sub-committee of the BSC and comprises research students and academic staff from universities across the UK. As co-chair of the sub-committee I am partly responsible for organising the postgraduate portion of the Annual British Society of Criminology conference. Additionally I moderate the Postgraduate Committee’s Facebook page which currently has over 1000 members (including many who are internationally based). I am also a member of the BSC Youth Criminology/Youth Justice Network and the Howard League for Penal Reform Early Career Academics Network.

I have a number of years' teaching experience on a range of courses which focus on criminological theory and its application as well as research methods. I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.