To mark the end of a major, international ESRC-funded research study into prison architecture, design and technology conducted by the University of Brighton and the University of Birmingham, delegates are invited to register for a Symposium on Prison Architecture and Design in the Context of Reform.

The Symposium will be held on 2 June 2017, at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), 66 Portland Place, London

Reflecting the three-year study, the Symposium will focus on prison planning, design and modernisation in England & Wales, Scotland, Norway and Denmark. Speakers and delegates will be mixture of academic researchers with a particular interest in prisons and imprisonment, architects who have designed custodial facilities, prison managers and senior corrections and justice personnel.

The programme will include panels on:

• prison reform in England & Wales in the current context of reform
• the Nordic experience
• the Scottish experience
• the power of horticulture, gardens and landscape

and a

• World Cafe discussion

Confirmed speakers include:

• Prof Nick Hardwick (Royal Holloway, University of London, and former HM Chief Inspector of Prisons)
• Prof Yvonne Jewkes (University of Brighton)
• Christopher Liddle (Chairman, HLM Architects, London)
• Mads Mandrup Hansen (CF Moller Architects, Copenhagen)
• Stein Erik Laeskogen (Statsbygg, Oslo)
• Dr Berit Johnsen (Head of Research, the Correctional Service of Norway Staff Academy (KRUS), Oslo)
• Dr Sarah Armstrong (University of Glasgow)
• Roland Karthaus (Matter Architecture and RIBA Research Trust award holder)
• Dr Daryl Martin (University of York)
• Dr Jen Turner (University of Liverpool)
• Dr Geraldine Brown (Coventry University)
• Erwin James (The Guardian)
• Karl Lenton (Safe Innovation/The Free Prisoner)
• Dr Kate Gooch (University of Leicester and HMP Berwyn)

Attendance is Free. Register for your place here.

With the launch of the Carceral Geography Working Group, we also launch a series of Carceral Crossings, intended to showcase both new scholarship in this field, and to provide an opportunity for Early Career Researcher (undergraduate, masters, doctoral, and postdoctoral) members of the CGWG to bring their own research to the attention of the wider community.

Crossings combine brief reviews of a recent publication (e.g. a book or paper), with discussion of the resonance of that publication for the author’s ongoing work. Intended as blog-type pieces of up to 750 words (excluding references), submissions are warmly invited. If you would like to submit a Crossings piece, please scroll down and fill out the form below.

The first Carceral Crossings piece comes from Victoria Pereyra Iraola, a doctoral researcher at the University of Warwick, reflecting on Turner and Peters’ edited collection ‘Carceral Mobilities’ and introducing her own research on incarceration in Argentina. Read it here!

The Centre for Crime, Justice and Policing at the University of Birmingham is holding a one-day conference at the Edgbaston campus, Birmingham.

Confirmed topics include: mental health and offending, domestic violence, sexual offending, spatial analysis of crime, carceral geography, early intervention, prosecution, serial offending, solvability analysis, wellbeing of emergency services personnel, and extremism.

This event will be of interest to practitioners and academics working in the areas of crime, justice and policing, as well as stakeholders and policy-makers. Students of these topics are very welcome to attend too as this will present an excellent opportunity to network.

Register for this event by completing a quick online form.

The Prison Research Network (PRisoN) based at Leeds Beckett University is holding an annual conference on 19th May 2017.

This annual conference brings together delegates from universities, prisons, charities and organisations to discuss current issues relating imprisonment in research, policy and practice.

There will be a wide range of topics under discussion, including:

• Prisoner Control Technology
• Autism in Prison
• Older Prisoners
• Prison Violence

The keynote will be given by Professor Shadd Maruna.

All are welcome to attend.

19th May 9.30-4.30

Lewis Jones Suite, Carnegie Stand, Headingley Carnegie Stadium, St Michael’s Lane, Headingley, Leeds, LS6 3BR

Cost: £10 (£5 for concessions)

For booking information see

http://onlinestore.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/conferences-events-memberships/conferences/prison-research-network-annual-conference-prison

What are the political structures and effects of contemporary carceral institutions? How are they inscribed within wider cultural and political circuits of meaning in ways that shape contemporary society? How do incarcerated subjects resist their objectification and erasure within the contemporary industrial prison complex through strategies such as writing, creative production, autobiography, political protest and other modes of survival and expression? And in particular, how do certain socially opressed and politically vulnerable groups (such as women, transgender subjects, racialized subjects or political prisioners, among others) participate of these kinds of resistance and reinscription?

The international conference “Prison States and Political Embodiment” is concerned with these questions and the plurality of issues which ramify from them. By interrogating how the contemporary prison shapes cultural imaginaries and how, in turn, cultural imaginaries participate in the making – and unmaking – of hegemony, we hope to provide, through the organization of this conference, a fruitful critical occasion for the intellectual and political reflection on incarceration, embodiment and identity within contemporary carceral culture.

The conference will be held on the 7th and 8th of September 2017, at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, in Portugal. It is an initiative of Project CILM – Cities and (In)securities in Literature and Media, coordinated by principal researcher Susana Araújo, which is based at the Center for Comparative Studies of the University of Lisbon. The international conference will be followed by a special parallel event concerned with the same topics and articulated in a non-academic space, so as to ensure the dissemination of the critical thinking enabled in academia outside of its specific institutional limits.

For further information, see https://prisonstates.tumblr.com/about

Registration is now open for a two-day conference “Rethinking Prisons Research” at the University of Leicester, UK, focusing on the emerging theoretical, conceptual and empirical themes in prisons research, and possible future directions.

Carceral geographers are warmly invited to attend and to submit abstracts and/or methodological vignettes (see below).

Plenary speakers include:

• Dr Jamie Bennett (HMPPS)
• Dr Ben Crewe (University of Cambridge)
• Dr Dominique Moran (University of Birmingham)
• Dr Ruth Mann (HMPPS)

The conference is free for participants. Register here.

Call for Papers (and vignettes)

Abstracts are invited for papers addressing the broad theme of ‘rethinking prisons research.’ Whilst papers that address methodological concerns are welcome, the intention is that papers should generally speak to theoretical and conceptual themes and debates.

Abstracts from early career researchers and postgraduate researchers are particularly welcome.

Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and should be emailed to: Dr Kate Gooch (kate.gooch@le.ac.uk) by the deadline for submission which is 19th May 2017

Dominique Moran’s plenary session at the “Rethinking Prisons Research” conference will be sponsored by the Carceral Geography Working Group of the RGS-IBG, and will address the methodological intersections between (carceral) geography and criminology. In other words, it will explore the ways in which geographers approach carcerality methodologically, and the challenges and benefits of deploying methods such as mapping and walked interviews in the carceral setting.

Separate from the general CFP for the conference, there is an invitation for methodological vignettes, 3-5 minute ‘snapshot’ presentations by carceral geographers or other researchers using spatial methods (broadly conceived), to be presented as part of this plenary session. These could be reflections on completed fieldwork, fieldwork in progress, or planned fieldwork. Contributing a vignette does not preclude presenters from submitting a full abstract for the conference itself, and if a full paper is also presented, there can be overlap between this and the vignette. To discuss, and/or to suggest a vignette, please email Dominique at d.moran@bham.ac.uk by 19 May 2017.