Faculty of Law

The Centre for Criminology is an embedded unit of the University’s Faculty of Law. The centre is dedicated to pursuing an innovative programme of criminological research and to delivering high-quality graduate education in criminology. It has a vibrant programme of research, aimed principally at fostering and developing clusters of research activity around the following substantive themes:

• Criminalisation
• Justice
• Punishment
• Security
• Victimisation

The centre’s work across these areas is intersected by orientations and intellectual commitments that speak to the distinctive collective character of criminological research in Oxford. These are:

• a research focus that investigates these topics internationally and globally, and in many jurisdictions across the global north and global south
• a conception of criminology comprised of productive dialogue between empirical enquiry and social theorising, and critical normative theorising about systems of police, criminal justice and punishment and their alternatives
• an overarching interest in the relation of police, criminal justice and punishment to the production of social and political subjectivities (around race, gender, membership etc)
• an approach to exploring questions of order, crime and justice that is attuned to the politics of knowledge production and experiments with ‘new’ methodologies (visual, digital, de-colonial)
• a commitment to engaging closely with practitioners, policy-makers and diverse publics with a view to using criminology to help build a better politics of order, justice and control

These approaches to the study of crime and criminal justice inform teaching and doctoral supervision in the centre. They create an intellectually stimulating and collaborative environment to pursue your study in criminology.

At the forefront of multidisciplinary research into the nature and role of law in society.

The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS) brings together scholars with diverse academic backgrounds and ambitions, who pursue their own research topics and are also encouraged to collaborate widely and develop multifaceted research programmes. Researchers address fundamental questions about the nature of law, its relations with morality, religion, and justice, and its role in regulation, government and community, the nature of rules and legalistic thought, the development of laws, legal systems and legal cultures, and the social character of the rule of law.

The CSLS welcomes students who wish to pursue research in any aspect of socio-legal studies, broadly defined. The centre's staff have a range of expertise in socio-legal research and methodologies and draw on a range of cognate fields, including anthropology, jurisprudence, political science, regulation studies, economics and sociology. Supervision can be offered in most areas of social-legal studies.

The CSLS has a community of around thirteen full-time research staff and thirty-three graduate research students. Links with leading scholars in Oxford’s Faculty of Law and throughout the University enhance the breadth of the centre’s research and the resources made available to students.

Fostering world-class research in human rights law.

The Bonavero Institute of Human Rights is dedicated to fostering world-class research in human rights law, to promoting public engagement in and understanding of human rights issues, and to building valuable conversations and collaborations between human rights scholars and human rights practitioners.

The Institute, a research centre within the Faculty of Law, is based at Mansfield College, Oxford. It seeks to provide opportunities for students at the University of Oxford to explore current issues in human rights, and to think about the application of human rights law in practice.