Current PhD students
View research profiles and thesis themes for some of our PhD students in Criminology.
Sebastian Acevedo
Sebastian originally came to Manchester from Chile. Through different tools from Quantitative Criminology, his PhD research is based on the unequal distribution of public safety in Chile, analysing crime surveys and administrative records at the municipal level. His research interests are related to fear of crime, policing, local government, decentralisation, inequality in Latin America and Sociological Theory.
Diana Bociga Gelvez
Diana’s ESRC funded PhD research aims to explore the nature and organisation of the phenomenon of professional money laundering facilitation in the UK building on an on-going collaboration between The University of Manchester and Police Scotland. Diana´s broader research interests cover: illicit finance, AML regulations, white collar and organised crime. She is interested in criminal networks, ego-networks and the use of social network analysis for understanding and tackling illicit finances.
Allysa Czerwinsky
Allysa is a President’s Doctoral Scholar whose research is on understanding personal narratives and identity-based harm discussed within misogynistic incel forums through netnographic immersion and qualitative analysis. Her research interests include intersections of technology, harm, and violence; extremist groups operating within digital society; and ethics in sensitive subjects research.
Pete Duncan
Pete’s ESRC-funded PhD research investigates the nature, organisation, and control of variably illicit tax minimisation in UK professional football. Pete’s research interests include financial, white-collar, organisational, and cyber-enabled crimes, and drug policy. Pete is a founding member of the Manchester Organisational Non-compliance Initiative (MONI) and is Early Career Associate at the European Society of Criminology Working Group on Organisational Crime (EUROC).
Nicola Fox
Nicola's PhD is focussed on the identification of harm and vulnerability experienced by children who go missing in England, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her work is interdisciplinary, involving the evaluation of the use of natural language processing and machine learning to identify the concepts of missing, harm and vulnerability in text data on a large scale. Previously Nicola has conducted research on the detection of hate speech against women and immigrants on Twitter.
Sophie Henderson
Sophie is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and is interested in the impact of drug policies on people. Her PhD research examines Canada’s drug policy on cannabis and its impact on how people who use and sell illicit drugs are represented, both in Canada and internationally. Previously, Sophie has conducted research on drug trafficking and other illicit economies in Central Asia and North Africa.
Monira Jahan
Monira Nazmi Jahan is a law academic from Bangladesh and is currently pursing a PhD in Criminology at the University of Manchester. She received the prestigious School of Social Sciences Criminology PhD Studentship. The PhD research is based on technology facilitated sexual extortion and exploitation. Her research interests include gender-based violence, analysis and application of criminological theories, terrorism, international criminal law and international human rights law.
Ezra Lampesberger
Ezra’s PhD focusses on the impact of illicit and illegal money streams on the rise of right-wing extremism, both in terms of political parties and policies. This follows the journal format, allowing them to explore different aspects of the topic. Ezra is a quantitative researcher currently focussing on social network analysis. Their broader research interests include crimes of the powerful, systematic misconduct against marginalised groups, white collar crime, and crimes against LGBTQ+ people.