New ECOH Interview: Loraine Gelsthorpe

Loraine Gelsthorpe is an Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, where she was the Director from 2017 to 2022. She chairs the European Society of Criminology’s Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice working group, and she received the ESC European Criminology Award for a lifelong contribution in 2021. She was President of the British Society of Criminology from 2011 to 2015, and she is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a fellow of the Roal Society of Arts. Professor Gelsthorpe has also collaborated in improving pre-sentence reports, diversion from prosecutions, and prisons. Her research has focused on gender, race, and social exclusion in the criminal justice system. Her research is concerned with ethics and social justice.

Loraine Gelsthorpe was interviewed by Michele Burman (who chairs with her the Gender, Crime and Criminal Justiceworking group and is the current president-elect of the ESC) during the 2023 ESC conference in Florence. In this interview, Gelsthorpe explains how she got interested in Criminology, despite her rural origins and her initial background in social work. Labelling processes over people who were different proved to be key. From there, she then talks about the development of, and need of, a feminist criminology. Gelsthorpe is interested in theory and in practice on psychoanalysis, and takes time to discuss the case of Stanley, ‘The Jack-roller’. Strong advocate of public criminology, she stresses the importance of gender for criminology, and expresses her views on British criminology.