The Academy of Social Sciences is the National Academy of Academics, Learned Societies and Practitioners in the Social Sciences. Its mission is to promote social sciences in the United Kingdom for the public benefit. Being an Academician means that a peer group has reviewed the standing and impact of one’s work and found it worthy of the conferment of the award of Academician.

Jackie has conducted ethnographic research in the field of criminal justice both in England and Wales and in Europe across more than two decades. Through a series of path-breaking studies of the work and practices of criminal defence lawyers, including a study commissioned by the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (1993), her research and scholarship has had a significant impact on policy and practice. It led to the transformation of professional standards, guidelines and training for criminal defence provision in England and Wales. Her work is empirical and often comparative, and adopts a socio-legal approach to the study of criminal justice, as evidenced by her large-scale ethnographic studies of legal actors and legal processes. These studies have contributed to our understanding of legal processes by using qualitative empirical findings to challenge the effectiveness of legal norms and procedures as they operate in practice. Her work impacts on policy and practice, as well as academic scholarship, by demonstrating the limitations of legal procedural protections when legal and occupational cultures are not also addressed.

Jackie actively promotes a broader social science approach to the study of law, training the next generation of researchers through externally funded research and doctoral students. She has been elected to the Council of JUSTICE and has provided expert evidence to government bodies and the courts. She is the Director of Warwick Law School’s Centre for Criminal Justice, which promotes a socio-legal and interdisciplinary approach to the study of law. She is currently establishing a cross-faculty Centre for Operational Policing Research with colleagues from Psychology and the Warwick Business School.