Annual University of Plymouth Criminology Conference

Ghosts of futures, pasts and presents: The hauntology of crime, harm and criminology
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
"I will live in the past, present and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach." A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, 1843

  • The Levinsky Room, Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth

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Experiences of crime are often shadowed by spectral forces – ghostly remnants of past injustices, lingering traumas, and unresolved conflicts.
Inspired by Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology and Mark Fisher’s reinterpretation of the concept as a cultural condition of late capitalism, this conference invites scholars to explore the intersections of criminology and hauntology, engaging with themes of harm, justice, punishment, and deviance through the lens of spectrality, temporalities, and the uncanny.
We also seek contributions that interrogate the ghosts that haunt contemporary and future criminological thought and practice, in particular, those that critique the neoliberal consensus that Fisher argues has trapped society in a perpetual present, devoid of the possibility of a different future.
You are able to join this conference by attending on campus or on Zoom. To join via Zoom: https://plymouth.zoom.us/j/92761573992
Please contact sian.lewis@plymouth.ac.uk for further information.
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Plenary speakers

  • Dr Esmorie Miller, Lancaster University
  • Dr Michael Fiddler, University of Greenwich

Organisers and contacts

Siân Lewis and Iain Channing (email: sian.lewis@plymouth.ac.uk)
This conference is free to attend.

Schedule

9am: Coffee arrives
9.30-10.15: Plenary 1: Michael Fiddler University of Greenwich
  • Conjuring a ‘ghost’ criminology: exploring the discipline’s turn to the spectral
10.30-11.30: Panel 1 Contemporary issues in weird times
(Chair: Oliver Smith)
  • Phil Hubbard, Kings College, London: Displaced, deviant, devoured: rural gentrification, folk horror and the ecological uncanny in 21st century hauntronica
  • Janina Smietanka, University of Plymouth: Hauntology of Associate Lecturers: An Autoethnography on the Academic Sweatshop and Britain’s University Underclass
  • Alexandra Burgess, University of Plymouth: The Perpetual Mill: Insights from those responsible for sexual harm, balanced by perspectives of victims and survivors
11.45-12.45: Panel 2 Beyond the grave: Dying, death and disorder
(Chair: Michael Fiddler)
  • Rimona Afana, Independent Researcher: “They Started Bombing the Graves”: Israel's Necropolitics Against the Dead and the Unborn in Gaza (via Zoom)
  • Judith Rowbotham, University of Plymouth and Christopher Wilkes, University of Plymouth: The Enduring Lure of the Criminal Past: Using hauntology to understand the popular appeal of prison museums
  • Douglas Farrer, University of Ottawa: Colonial hauntings and historical injustices: Crime scene photography on Guam
12.45-1.45 Lunch
1.45-2.30: Plenary 2: Esmorie Miller Lancaster University
  • Race, Youth, Gender, and Penalty in the Hauntological Spectre of British Interwar Youth Penal Reform: Battleground Modernity
2.45-4.00: Panel 3 Screen time: Technologies and digital hauntings
(Chair: Julie Parsons)
  • Sarah Fathallah, University of Cambridge: Beyond racial bias: The structural injustice of carceral biometrics (via Zoom)
  • Kit Towner, University of York: Stalemate in the TERF wars
  • Emma Taylor, University of Plymouth: “The Hauntology of Online Dating: Specters of Desire, Ghosted Realities, and the Digital Uncanny”
  • Wemmy Ogunyankin, University of Hull: Photographs as Ghosts of US Incarceration’s Past (and Present)
4.15-5.15: Panel 4 Spectres of harmful pasts and futures
(Chair: Esmorie Miller)
  • Julie Parsons, University of Plymouth: Discursive repositioning, companion stories and narratives of belonging for criminal justice impacted people
  • Dr Lisamarie Deblasio, University of Plymouth: Voices Unheard: Exploring the Experiences of Women Overcoming Sexual Violence in Mental Health Institutions
  • Emma D. Watkins, University of Birmingham & Eleanor Bland, Oxford Brookes University: (Re)-embedded harms in settler society: Targeted policing of indigenous & subaltern Others in Australia
5.15: Conference close and drinks
British Society of Criminology
CHEx
University of Plymouth
 

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