Dr Luca Follis

PhD Supervision Interests

I welcome potential doctoral students in the areas of: legal sociology, transnational crime, human rights, prisons, and capital punishment. My interests are quite broad so it is best just to send me an email or drop by my office.

My Role

I am Part II Director of Studies for Criminology and Director of the MRes Criminology.

Research Interests

Current research projects:

The Prisoner and the Exception

This project explores the central role of penal exclusion in America's democratic imaginary. I trace the relationship between criminal and legal dispossession, citizenship and the emergence of the local state. 

Democracy, Punishment, Human Rights

I am also interested in the re-framing of criminal justice issues in terms of human rights within the EU and the manner in which they have been linked to the constitution of the modern state and EU political identity. 

In particular, I explore questions like: how deeply does the commitment to human rights penetrate the criminal justice apparatus of member states and how do these commitments dislodge existing structures and relations of justice that have historically developed within them? Are the building blocks of a new EU citizenship and political identity being forged in the detention and incarceration spaces of its member states?

Current Teaching

I convene and contribute lectures to ASSC 205 (Criminological Thought). I also contribute lectures to ASSC 102 (Crime and Social Life) and teach ASSC 335 (Historical and Philosophical Aspects of Punishment).