Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe, Director of the Institute of Criminology and also the Director of the Centre for Community, Gender and Social Justice (based in the Institute), and Director of the Cambridge ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership across the social sciences has been awarded the prestigious 2021 European Society of Criminology Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contribution to European Criminology.
In her acceptance speech at the ESC's 21st annual conference on 7 September (virtually, in Vilnius), Loraine described something of her personal experiences which sparked an interest in Criminology (including being a child of the vicarage, and school holiday experiences of working in a psychiatric hospital - with elderly women residents placed there in their teenage years for being in ‘moral danger’. She studied History and Philosophy with Social Administration at Sussex University (much taken by 19th century social history and moral philosophy), followed by a brief career in social work. All these things inspired her to turn to Criminology and while she came to Cambridge to study for the MPhil – with a post in probation in prospect afterwards, the opportunity to do a PhD at the Institute changed the direction of her career. Subsequent post-doctoral posts at different universities involved research with the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, men’s prisons in the Midlands, and then the probation service and magistrates’ courts, before she returned to Cambridge (initially as a Senior Research Associate, Departmental and then University Lecturer). Loraine also spoke about the essential precepts and principles of revisionist feminist criminology and how she has always seen this as a step towards an inclusive humanistic criminology.
In responding to the Award Loraine said "I am deeply honoured to receive this Award and am hugely grateful to colleagues and students for their intellectual interest and creative energy over the years - which has spurred me on in a quest for evidence-based criminal justice".