Dr Shannon DeBlasio is a lecturer within the School of Psychology and Social Sciences, teaching criminology and forensic psychology modules and working to support students through their BSc and MSc studies. Before joining Arden, Shannon worked within the prison estate. She spent seven years in a category B male prison undertaking a series of roles including treatment managing the offender behaviour change programmes, working non-operationally as a substance misuse practitioner, and within the security department as an intelligence analyst.

Dr Mark Pettigrew (BA Hons; MA; PhD; FHEA) is an award winning researcher and criminologist. After completing his doctoral research on capital punishment and death row incarceration in the United States, Mark began his career researching the use of whole life imprisonment in England & Wales and the crimes that give rise to the sentence. Since then, Mark has published extensively on sexual paraphilic disorders and their role in homicide and serial killing.

Dr Isla Masson is a programme leader for criminology and sociology courses at Arden University. Her research interests range from female offenders, gender, and motherhood to restorative Justice, rehabilitation, incarceration, penology, offender management, and prisoners’ families, among other related topics. Isla has written a great number of publications which focus on these subjects including reducing the harm of short term imprisonment and restorative justice with female offenders.

Having taught on criminology, criminal Justice, and combined degree programmes at Sunderland, Northumbria and Teesside Universities since 2013, Dr MarkBushell has a wealth of experience in the higher education industry. He also has proven qualitative and ethnographic research skills, acquired whilst researching migrant workers in the North East night-time economy, a project for which he recently submitted his PhD thesis. His areas of academic interest include critical criminology, violence, labour markets and social harm.

Dr David Sheldon joined Arden University after previously working at King’s College London and the University of Birmingham. He is a criminologist with a background in law. David is an ethnographic researcher which means that during his research he immerses himself into an area and population to understand how they interact and why things happen. His research has focussed on prisons, sex offenders, and violence which has meant he spent time in prison as a researcher talking to prisoners and prison staff to understand the complexities of prison life and social dynamics.

Dr Liam James Leonard (BA; M. Phil; PhD), formerly worked with the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, and several universities internationally. Dr Leonard is chair of the International Criminology Association and former member secretary and president of the Sociological Association of Ireland. He was the senior academic and primary instructor on the award-winning Custodial Care Prison Studies Program, which trained approx. 1,000 recruits in a humane approach to prison and corrections work for the Irish Prison Service.

Dr Amy Jones has a passion for sociology and earned a first class degree, two master’s degrees, and a PhD on the subject. Amy’s PhD research focused on the ways in which neoliberalism and the most recent economic recession have affected those aged 60 and over, particularly those living within an area of severe deprivation. In addition to studying this subject, Amy has been both a college and university lecturer for over a decade. She was Head of Access Sociology at a college for five years, and then went on to teach this subject at a number of universities, including Arden University.