New ECOH Interview: Lesley McAra

Lesley McAra, CBE, is a Professor of Penology and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) of the University of Edinburgh, and member of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. She is a former President (2019-2020) and Executive Board member (2018-2021) of the ESC. McAra has held leading positions both within the University of Edinburgh and beyond, as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and advisor on juvenile justice policy to both the Scottish Government and the UK Government. She has intensively conducted research on various topics in the sociology of punishment such as youth crime and juvenile justice and the politics of crime control, being awarded (together with Susan McVie) the Howard League for Penal Reform Research Medal and the UK’s ESRC prize for Outstanding Public Policy Impact.

Lesley McAra was interviewed for the European Criminology Oral History (ECOH) project by her award-winning colleague Mike Levi, in the framework of the 2023 ESC Conference in Florence. In this interview, McAra reflects on the research, community outreach and academic management dimensions of her career, debating the various ways of being a criminologist. She comments as well on her role as co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology and wonders whether there is such a thing as British criminology. In addition, she ponders on a critical topic such as the relations between academics and policymakers, considering it from the perspective of Scotland, against the backdrop of the Scottish penal culture and what has been incidentally called the Scottish penal exceptionalism.