Henrique Carvalho

Henrique is Professor of Law and Deputy Head of School at Warwick Law School, University of Warwick. He is also Director of Academic Staff Development and co-Director of the Centre for Critical Legal Studies at Warwick.

Henrique is a critical theorist of criminalisation, punishment, law and justice, examining these issues as cultural, socio-political phenomena which both reflect and condition matters of identity and belonging, authority and order. Henrique's broader research interests include criminal law and justice, socio-legal studies, responsibility and punishment, aesthetics, narratology, and legal, social, cultural and political theory. He is the author of The Preventive Turn in Criminal LawLink opens in a new window (2017, OUP), which was shortlisted for the 2018 Hart-SLSA Theory and History Book Prize. He is also the co-author, together with Anastasia Chamberlen, of Questioning PunishmentLink opens in a new window (2024, Routledge) and the co-editor of The Embodied State: Emotions, State Power and Social MarginalizationLink opens in a new window (2025, Routledge) and Decolonizing the Criminal Question: Colonial Legacies, Contemporary ProblemsLink opens in a new window (2023, OUP, available Open Access).

Henrique is currently finalising outputs on his latest project, 'Just Sentences: Narrating and Rewriting Criminal Law's Aesthetic Injustice' , which was funded by a British Academic Mid-Career Fellowship (Sep 2025 - Aug 2026). This project is a critical study of sentencing remarks in English courts, paying particular attention to their aesthetic dimension and their cultural role. He is also a Co-Investigator in the Vulnerable State project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2023-2026), which explores the ambivalent moral and affective economies of state power in the governance of marginalised populations. In addition, Henrique has a longstanding collaboration with Anastasia Chamberlen on critical and emancipatory approaches to justice. Furthermore, he is a founding member and coordinator of the International Justice Arts Network (IJAN) and of Creative Learning for Justice (CLJ).

Henrique is an editorial board member, and book reviews co-editor, of Social & Legal Studies, and an editorial board member of the International Journal of Law in Context and of the Journal of Critical Realism.