Profile

Emily is Assistant Professor of Criminology and joined the University of Warwick in early 2023, having held posts at the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, Keele, Sheffield, and Derby. Her background is in British social policy, and she has a special interest in the intersection of politics, crime and justice. Emily is on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Criminology, an academic advisor on the Youth Justice Board Network, and a member of The European Society of Criminology, The Royal Statistical Society, and the British Society of Criminology.

Research

Much of Emily’s research focuses on the relationship between crime, politics, and inequality. Specifically, how long-term macro processes (such as political socialisation) affect these dynamics. Her work has examined how New Right socio-economic polices under Margaret Thatcher impacted the life-courses of those who grew up during this period in the UK, with respect to crime and criminalisation.

She has recently commenced a new ESRC-funded study (as PI) in association with colleagues at the Universities of Nottingham (Professor Stephen Farrall) and Nottingham Trent (Professor Andromachi Tseloni). This study will examine homicide trends in England and Wales over the last four decades, disaggregating homicide subtypes and using several datasets including the Home Office’s Homicide Index and the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Previous research conducted by Emily comprise youth justice under New Labour (with the ESRC and the Youth Justice Board); persistent youth offending (the Youth Justice Board); fear of crime (ESRC) and restorative policing (College of Policing).

Emily is a mixed-methods researcher, with expertise in quantitative and qualitative longitudinal analysis, secondary data analysis, time-series modelling, survey development and in-depth narrative analysis.

Teaching

In 2023/24 Emily is convening SO350 - Punishment Justice and Control (with Dr. Shona Robinson-Edwards) and SO130 Introduction to Social Analytics in Social Inequalities Research (with Dr. Richard Lampard)

Completed PhD Students

Robyn Fawcett 2023 with Professor Alex Nunn (on a University of Derby Studentship Award) 2023: “Understanding families lived experiences of Universal Credit”.

Victoria Barrett 2020 with Professor Stephen Farrall (on a University of Sheffield Studentship Award): “Assessing the relevance of political attitudes towards ‘rulebreakers’ in the criminal justice system, the welfare system and the education system in British society today”.

Recent publications

Farrall, S. and Gray, E. (Forthcoming) The politics of crime, punishment and justice: Exploring the lived reality and enduring legacies of the 1980s radical right. Routledge.

Barratt, V., Gray, E and Farrall, S. (2023) Politics, Punitive Attitudes and Problematic Populations - Public Perceptions of 'Scroungers', 'Unruly Children’, and ‘Good for Nothings’. Palgrave Macmillan.  https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-27477-0

Gray, E., Farrall, S. and Jones, P. (2022) ‘The long arm of welfare retrenchment: how New Right socio-economic policies in the 1980s affected contact with the criminal justice system in adulthood’. British Journal of Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azac035

Farrall, S., Gray, E. and Jones, P.M. (2022) ‘Life-Courses, Social Change and Politics: Evidence for the Role of Politically-Motivated Structural-level Influences on Individual Criminal Careers’. Criminology and Criminal Justice. https://doi.org/10.1177/17488958221126

Jones P.M., Gray, E., and Farrall, S (2022). ‘The spatial and temporal development of British prisons from 1901 to the present: The role of de-industrialisation’. European Journal of Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/147737082211151

Dodsley, T., and Gray, E. (2021) ‘Resistance and reproduction: an arts-based investigation into young people’s emotional responses to crime; British Journal of Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa063

Farrall, S., Gray, E., Jones, P.M., and Hay, C. (2021). 'Losing the discursive battle but winning the ideological war: who holds Thatcherite values now?' Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217209867

Farrall, S., Gray, E., Nunn, A., & Tepe, D. (2021). 'Global Pressures, Household Social Reproduction Strategies and Compound Inequality'. New Political Economy: https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2021.2007231

Farrall, S., Gray, E. and Jones, P (2020) ‘Politics, Social and Economic Change and Crime: Exploring the Impact of Contextual Effects on Offending Trajectories’, Politics and Society, Special Issue ‘Societies Under Stress’, https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329220942395

Farrall, S., Gray, E. and P. M. Jones (2020) ‘The Role of Radical Economic Restructuring in Truancy from School and Engagement in Crime’, British Journal of Criminology,. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azz040

Gray, E., Grasso, M., Farrall, S., Jennings, W. and Hay, C. (2019) ‘Political Socialization, Worry about Crime and Antisocial Behaviour: An Analysis of Age, Period and Cohort Effects’, British Journal of Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azy024

Media

Twitter: @Thatcher_legacy

Emily has been involved in co-producing two short films on the impact of Thatcherism on crime and inequalities, one of which is intended as a learning resource for A-level and undergraduate students. Both outputs are available on https://vimeo.com/thatcherlegacy and their promotion has been supported by the Political Studies Association and The British Sociological Association.

Email: Emily.Gray@warwick.ac.uk