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Biography
Professor Philippa Tomczak holds a 拢1.3m European Research Council Starting Grant [2022-2027] and held a 拢1.1m from 2020-2024. She won the 2017 British Society of Criminology Book Prize and the 2022 European Society of Criminology Young Criminologist Award. Between 2015 and 2018 Philippa was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow (scheme success rate: 14%) and British Academy Rising Star at the University of Sheffield Centre for Criminological Research. She has a PhD in Criminology from the University of Manchester School of Law, and a BA, MA and MSc from the University of Oxford. She mobilises processual ontologies throughout her work and originally trained as a Geographer.
Philippa founded and directs the Prisons, Health and Societies Research Group and undertook with the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial summary or arbitrary executions from 2022-2023 and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (England and Wales) from 2019-2022. Her 2023 article with Mulgrew was adopted in Section D of the first UN thematic report on deaths in prison [A/HRC/53/29, 18.4.23], proposing means of making the scale of prisoner deaths and decedent characteristics visible, and presented to the Council of Europe Council for Penological Co-operation (Strasbourg 2024, Krakow 2025). She is an academic advisor to LUNG's play and film ''. Further knowledge exchange and impact activities are in train with HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland (September 2026 - ).
Philippa appeared, by invitation, on BBC RADIO 4 (2022) Thinking Allowed: Prisoner Protest. Philippa's publications can be viewed . ORCID identifier: . Her expertise is diverse. She now focuses on death investigations and the regulation of criminal justice detention. She has also worked extensively on prison suicide, the penal voluntary sector and charitable involvement across criminal justice. Philippa particularly welcomes inquiries from prospective postdoctoral researchers, PhD students and academics seeking to work in the following areas: i) investigating deaths in criminal justice detention (Coroner and specialist e.g. Ombudsman/ review investigations); ii) regulating criminal justice detention (including inspection, monitoring, complaints and campaigning activities); iii) the voluntary sector and criminal justice.
Philippa has been invited to review high value grants by international funders including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Grants competition (the funder's largest grants in value and duration); the Israel Science Foundation; UK Research and Innovation, including Future Leaders Fellowships >拢1m; UK Economic and Social Research Council; Leverhulme Trust; Marie Curie research grants; British Council. She has advised, by invitation, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research on their Public Health Research Programme on the health of men in prison and post-release.
She sits, by invitation, on the and . The British Journal of Criminology is amongst the world's top criminology journals, publishing work of the highest quality from around the world and across all areas of criminology. It was the highest ranked Criminology, Criminal Law and Policing journal in the Google Scholar 'Top Publications' 2025. She also adjudicates for the British Journal of Criminology when diverging peer reviews are received.
Philippa published the first monograph on ', which won the 2017 . For Prof M Bosworth (Oxford), it "develops a fresh approach to penal power that should reorient the field of study". Prof S Maruna (Manchester) noted: "Tomczak's sophisticated, empirical exploration of the voluntary sector's involvement in that most involuntary of sectors, the UK's penal system, simply could not be more timely or more badly needed. It fills an enormous gap in the criminological literature while opening up dozens of new avenues for new research. A real path-breaker". Philippa's second monograph '' provides the first detailed account of the investigations that follow prison suicides, using the case study of England and Wales. Professor P Leach (Middlesex) recognised that "this excellent study shows the wider impact of self-inflicted deaths in prison and deserves to be widely read''.
She has published articles in leading journals including Theoretical Criminology and her work has been cited by scholars based globally, including Australia, Canada, the USA, Finland and New Zealand. She has been invited to peer review articles for journals including: Perspectives in Public Health; Critical Public Health; BMC Public Health; The Lancet Regional Health; Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology; Journal of Social Policy; Social Problems; Nordic Journal of Human Rights; Criminology; Theoretical Criminology; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Critical Criminology; International Review of Victimology; Punishment and Society; Policing; Criminal Justice Policy Review. She has also reviewed monographs by invitation for Routledge, University of Bristol Press and Palgrave. Philippa has organised multiple international conferences with high profile speakers and early career scholars.
Philippa has extensive experience of mentoring early career scholars and was commended as a University of Sheffield in November 2017. She has taught across undergraduate Criminology modules at the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, having a range of lecturing and seminar-taking experience. She has examined a PhD thesis at the University of Portsmouth Institute of Criminal Justice Studies and supervised Masters' level dissertations and a PhD thesis.
Qualifications
- PhD Criminology, the University of Manchester (funded by a School of Law Scholarship)
- MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice, the University of Oxford (Linacre College)
- BA/MA Geography, the University of Oxford (Hertford College).
- Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE).
Recent Publications
TOMCZAK, P, 2026.
TOMCZAK, P and MULGREW, R, 2023. Incarceration.
TOMCZAK, P, 2021. Theoretical Criminology: Won the 2022 European Society of Criminology Young Criminologist Award.
TOMCZAK, P and MCALLISTER, S, 2021. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law. 43(2), 212-230