I have an interest in investigating social reactions to behaviour deemed to be criminal or harmful in different contexts. Currently I am exploring the relationship between crime, punishment and war, as these relate to specific and differnt social contexts and changes in governing and security discourses and practices. I have also developed an interest in how risk, control and security are experienced or produced through technology thanks to a project on risk, borders and security technology. I would also be interested in investigating what technologies and logics are used to produce security in different contexts. I have mostly worked on the basis of Michel Foucault's and Giorgio Agamben's analysis, and I am influenced by some feminist writings, but I am open to different approaches and theories. 

Key Words

reactions to criminal and harmful activities in different contexts, and processes of criminalization. Key-Concepts of security, technology, border, risk, war are among the ones I could supervise research on. In relation to war I am interested in its relations to issues of crime and justice, forms of punishment in war, military interventions as particular modality of war, security sector reform, and state crimes. In the past I also worked on prostitution and trafficking (for sexual exploitation) in context of migration control, lately I am interested also at current reactions to migration. 

Supervision

I d be very happy to hear of your interests in related areas and discuss possible research projects.

Currently supervising: 

Angela Rogan (NINE scholarship 1+3): Facebook Feminism to contest harm: A study to understand a changing landscape of healthcare in the technological era (First Supervisor).

Jason McKillen (LINAS scholarship): AI for the Irish Border

 Previous PhD supervision:

• Richard Montague, “Challenging Hate Crime in a Divided City” (Second Supervisor): successful (minor corrections)
• Carey Doyle, “Migration, Planning and Super-diversity in Rural Northern Ireland and England” (Second Supervisor): Successful (minor corrections)

I am currently finalising a monograph for Routledge entitled Understanding war as punishment: punitive logics beyond the state (due in 2021). It draws partly from my PHD thesis. The PhD analyzed the use of military force in the post 9/11 'war on terror' context with particular reference to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It investigated the overlap of criminology and international relations, the use of war, or the threat of it, as a means of punishing and establishing order, thus defining borders in the international sphere. The new monograph expands that framework to understand the punitive logics behind some recent military interventions considering in particular Kosovo, Iraq and Libya. It draws on works on the continuum between military might and policing, by looking at how after these military interventions disciplining institutions were constructed and shaped in the local contexts, considering specifically security sector reforms.

Before my PhD on the war on terror, I worked on prostitution, theoretically on some criminalising/victimizing feminist understanding of prostitution, and empirically on crimes committed against female migrants by criminal organizations, in the context of Italy's restrictive migration regimes. Further, I was involved into an enquiry into issues of youth prostitution in the region of Emilia Romagna (Italy) that was part of the European Project Stop Trafficking in Europe.

Education/ Academic Qualifications

Law Degree, University of Bologna (Italy): First Class

MA Criminology and Research Method, Keele University, UK

PhD Ulster University, Northern Ireland

Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Educational Teaching, Queen's University Belfast.

Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

In 2014-2015 I was a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law and Society, in UC Berkeley (California), in 2018 at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (Germany). As a student I was a visiting scholar at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (New York) and while an Erasmus student at Rotterdam University (with Rene van Swaaningen), I attended a course on Historiography of Feminist Ideas with Rosi Braidotti in the Women's Studies Centre at Utrecht University (Netherlands).

Currently

CRM 2001 Criminological Theory (convenor, lecturer and tutor)

CRM3007 Criminology Beyond Borders (Convenor, Lecturer and tutor)

SOC9071 Exploring Technology in Contemporary Society (MA level) (Convenor and Lecturer)

EDU8102 Theories, Frameworks and Concepts (MA level)

SOC9024 Key Issues in Social Theory (Foucault and Governmentality)- MA level 

In the past

SOC1005 Digital Society

CRM1001 Introduction to Criminology

CRM1002 Exploring Criminology

CRM3002 Research Dissertation. 

CRM2008 Development of Policing (Interrnational Policing)

CRM3002 Research Project and Dissertation (Literature Review).

SOC9024 Key Issues in Social Theory (Governmentality Theory)- MA level