Dr Mark Brown
School of Law
Senior Lecturer
Full contact details
School of Law
EF11
Bartolome虂 House
Winter Street
葫芦影业
S3 7ND
- Profile
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I joined the School of Law in September 2014. Prior to that I spent four years developing a small law and justice consultancy focused on actors in the international sphere, based in Geneva, while also working as a Chamonix-based professional mountain guide.
My early career was spent in Australia where I was in the criminology program at the University of Melbourne until 2010. In 2011 I was a visiting professor at the Institute for Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Lausanne. I retain a Senior Honorary Fellow position at Melbourne and have taught intensive masters modules on punishment and detention there and at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney.
I have published extensively in the area of prisons and penal policy with a focus upon both contemporary and historical penality. In 2013 Ashgate published Penal Culture and Hyperincarceration: The Revival of the Prison (co-authored with colleagues from the University of New South Wales), a modern history of the prison in Australia since about 1970. In 2014 my book Penal Power and Colonial Rule, a study of colonial uses of law as a strategy of governance in British India, was published by Routledge. More recently I have published on postcolonial penalities, southern criminology and decolonising approaches in criminology.
I have worked on the Indian subcontinent in several capacities since 1999 when I held a visiting appointment at University of Delhi Law School. My research has taken me to Bhutan, India and Pakistan and I have spent a number of winter seasons in Kashmir and Nepal. In recent years I have been visiting and working with colleagues at Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law in Thimphu, Bhutan, some of which has been funded by the UK鈥檚 Global Challenges Research Fund and the Leverhulme Foundation.
In my Geneva-based consultancy I was a senior advisor at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and advised on criminal justice reform at DCAF. Currently, I advise the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on matters surrounding imprisonment and recidivism globally, as well as undertaking strategic evaluations of UNODC work both in Vienna and in the field, including in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran, Kenya, and Pakistan.
I am currently working on a new book, tentatively titled Remaking Criminology. It develops my work on criminology and globalisation, postcolonialism and the southern criminological turn. My article on 鈥楶ostcolonial Penalities鈥 in India won the best article of 2017 prize in the journal Theoretical Criminology. I welcome applications from potential PhD scholars in these areas of work.
- Qualifications
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- PhD, Victoria University of Wellington
- Research interests
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- Prisons and Penal Policy
- Penal History and Theory
- Colonial and Post-colonial Law and Justice
- Global Criminology
- Transnational Organised Crime
- Fragile and Post-conflict States
- Sustainable Development Goal 16 - Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies
- Programme Evaluation in International Development
I invite expressions of interest from students interested in working within any of the areas of my research interest noted above.
- Publications
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Books
Edited books
Journal articles
Chapters
Book reviews
Conference proceedings papers
Other
- Teaching interests
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My teaching is underpinned by three key supports 鈥 a philosophy, a strategy and a style.
Philosophically, I believe that students learn best through engagement with their topic and the teaching materials that support it. Learning is enhanced if students can easily 鈥榝ind a way in鈥 to topics.
I believe that in criminology and law this is most effectively achieved by organising teaching around a series of narratives, or stories, that draw the student into a topic and help them to see the problem both in its wider context and its important detail.
Strategically, I think that teaching needs to balance foundational information about how legal and criminal justice processes operate with development of the conceptual tools for critique of those processes.
The modules I coordinate are thus structured around provision of both the 鈥榥uts and bolts鈥 knowledge that students need to take away as well as opportunities to learn and practice the techniques of analysis and critique. Assessment is designed so that students can demonstrate their grasp of both elements.
Finally, I aim for a teaching style that is open and, as far as possible within the large group lecture format, interactive.
My module websites provide students with the important points for each lecture 鈥 not lecture notes 鈥 and I speak to these in the lecture.
Students shouldn鈥檛 have their heads down taking notes in a lecture: you can鈥檛 listen properly when you鈥檙e doing that. And you certainly can鈥檛 engage in a dialogue.
I think effective teaching involves shifting lectures from being a content transfer exercise (from my lecture notes to the student鈥檚 lecture notes) to being an opportunity to listen and think and discuss.
- Teaching activities
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The modules I teach are:
Undergraduate
I contribute across a number of undergraduate modules
Postgraduate
- Global Perspectives on Terrorism and Counterterrorism (convenor)
- Crime and Globalisation (convenor)
- Issues in Comparative Penology (convenor)
- Professional activities and memberships
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Member of the Centre for Criminological Research