Research Update: Alice Gerlach

Post by Alice Gerlach, DPhil Candidate, Oxford University. This is part of the Border Criminologies’ ongoing themed series on our Network members. The series aims to present our members’ ongoing research, recent publications, new course modules they might be developing, grants and awards, partnerships and collaborations, and questions they have been considering or struggling with.

The beginning of the new academic year in October marks three years since I started work on my DPhil on women who have spent time in immigration detention in the UK Having spent a year interviewing women in detention, in the UK and in Jamaica I am now in the period of doctoral work that is only discussed in hushed tones – I am writing up.  I have written some (thousands) words, but I am still many (tens of thousands) words away from submission. I am in PhD limbo. While this writing process has taken up the majority of my time this year, I have managed to remain involved with other projects, and to build a network of like-minded academics in the field of immigration and security.

I have taken a more active role in the development and administration of the Measure of Quality of Life in Detention (MQLD) survey. So far this year we have piloted a new, streamlined, survey and methodology in two immigration removal centers, with plans to survey another center in the not too distant future.  The new methodology has increased our sample size and response rate considerably, and so I have high hopes for the increased insight this survey will add to research in the area of immigration detention in the future.  

Other highlights this year have been having the good fortune to network with other academics. In February this year I began a six week visit to The Border Crossing Observatory at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the ESRC Overseas Institutional Visit scheme . During this time I attended the Leverhulme networking event which brought together academics concerned with immigration and security from the UK, Norway and Australia. I was also delighted to be a guest at my Alumni, The University of Tasmania, kicking off the Institute for Social Change’s seminar series for 2016. As this academic year draws to a close I now find myself at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice where I will be positioned for the next 6 months.  I look forward to forging new relationships here during this time and into the future.  

Over the next months I will also be working on knowledge sharing and creating impact from my dissertation. In October I will head to the 3^rd CINETS annual conference at the University of Maryland, USA, where I will meet with academics from the US, and present my work to a new audience. While on this side of the world I will also return to Jamaica, where I conducted a portion of my fieldwork. While there I will present my findings to members of the National Organisation of Deported Migrations (NODM) who so kindly facilitated the research in 2015, and the British High Commission who are interested in how they can help resource improvements in conditions for women removed to Jamaica. I will also revisit academics from the University of the West Indies (UWI) Institute of Criminal Justice and Security with whom I was tenured during my fieldwork. I will also be joining a panel of experts to assist HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) in their review of expectations for places of immigration detention.

So, while I have many long, lonely writing hours ahead of me over the next six months I also have ample opportunities to build networks for the future and create impact with the research I have already conducted. Everything considered I feel I have an exciting few years ahead and look forward to getting on with it.  

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