Dr Hannah Bows

Hannah is currently an Associate Professor in Criminal Law and Director of Equality and Diversity within Durham Law School. She is Co-Director of the Centre for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (see here for details and to joint the centre: https://www.dur.ac.uk/cclcj/) and Deputy Director of the Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA). If you are interested in becoming a member of CRiVA and recieve updates on our work and invitations to events please email durham.criva@durham.ac.uk.

Her research interests are broadly located within the fields of violence against women, victimology, feminist and socio-legal theory.

Between 2020-2024 Hannah will be working on a project examining criminal justice outcomes and decision making in cases involving victims aged 60 and over, funded by a British Academy Wolfson Fellowship. For further details, see here: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/british-academy-and-wolfson-foundation-announce-six-new-fellowships-early-career-researchers

Over the last six years she has conducted research examining different forms of violence against older people, with a specific focus on domestic violence, sexual violence and homicide of older women. This work has led to a range of outputs, media interviews and articles, policy and public engagement activity. She has been announced the winner of the Emerald Publishing 'Real Impact' prize in the category 'Mobilising Research into Action' (2019-2020). Previously, she was awarded an ESRC Outstanding Impact (runner-up) prize in 2017. She is currently working on a British Academy funded project with colleagues in the Department of Sociology examining Sexual Violence at UK music festivals. You can find out more about the study here: https://safetystudydurham.wordpress.com/

Hannah is currently on a partial secondment to the Scottish Parliament, based in the information centre (SPICe) examining legal responses and potential legal reform in relation to abuse of older people. You can read more about the project here: https://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/100472.aspx

Outside of the university, Hannah is Associate Editor of the British Journal of Social Work. She is also the founder and director of the International Network for Research into Violence and Abuse and co-director of the British Society of Criminology Victims Network (with Professor Pam Davies at Northumbria University). She is Chair of Age UK Teesside. Additionally, Hannah sits on a number of external reference groups and official committees on issues relating to crime and (older) age.

Hannah is interested in supervising doctoral students who wish to conduct research in the areas of crimes against or by older people, violence against women, criminal law, gender, ageing and feminist or socio-legal theory.

https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/hannah-bows/

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