Dr. Abigail Rowe

Abi’s research is sociologically orientated and empirically grounded, with substantive interests in prisons, punishment, and gendered experiences of criminalisation. She has particular methodological interests and expertise in ethnographic and narrative approaches. Conceptually, Abi’s research connects and critically engage with the concerns of critical, feminist, queer and narrative criminologies, the sociology of deviance, and sexuality and gender studies. Her work has an interdisciplinary inflection, drawing influences from critical and feminist scholarship in history and literary studies, and – in my current work – beginning to incorporate socio-legal approaches.

Abi’s doctoral research was a mixed-methods ethnographic study exploring practices of coping and social support in two women’s prisons in England, and was concerned with themes of power, resistance, and selfhood. Her subsequent published work developed this to explore micro-level power relations in prisons, and reflexivity and epistemology in ethnographic research. More recently, broader questions about gendered experiences of criminalisation and themes around gender, sexuality and deviance have become more important in my work. Her current research focuses on the criminalisation and criminal justice experiences of same-sex attracted women, drawing on/interrogating criminological theory and combining narrative and socio-legal methods.