Alex is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) and joined Birkbeck in 2021.
Current projects
- Lived Experience of the Law is research project funded by the Nuffield Foundation being conducted in partnership with Revolving Doors. The Research focuses on the understandings, expectations, and experiences of ‘participation’ and ‘access to justice’ on the part of members of the public who find themselves caught up in judicial proceedings.
Previous projects
- Improving Care Proceedings is an empirical examination of parents, kinship carers, and young peoples’ experiences of care proceedings, funded by the Department for Education. This research supported the work of the Care Proceedings Reform Group, a subgroup of the Public Law Working Group.
- Voicing Loss was a project on bereaved people’s experiences of coroners’ inquests in partnership with the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, funded by the ESRC.
- Out of Court Disposals was an evaluation of Out of Court Disposals (such as conditional cautions) for drug possession offences led by Kantar Public, funded by the Home Office.
- Tackling Online Fraud was a research project funded by the Dawes Trust and conducted in partnership with Crest Advisory and the Police Foundation.
Alex was awarded a PhD in Law from the Open University in 2022, and her work examined how disability is understood and defined in UK welfare law. Her work focuses on invisible disabilities and fluctuating conditions in disability benefit processes, such as assessments and tribunal appeal hearings. She also has a BA in History and an MA in Medieval and Early Modern Studies from the University of Kent.
Before returning to academia in 2018, Alex held roles in quality assurance and user involvement in the charity sector, working with people with learning disabilities, mental health support needs, and people who had cared for someone living with a terminal illness.
Alex’s research interests include identity and performance, Disability Studies, social security and welfare law, administrative justice, and the experiences of lay participants in courts and tribunals.
A list of Alex’s publications can be found here.