Dr Phil Crockett Thomas

Dr Phil Crockett Thomas is a Lecturer in Criminology. She teaches across the undergraduate and postgraduate sociology and criminology. She co-convenes the SPCU901: Applying a Sociological Lens.

She is currently supervising an ESRC Open Collaborative PhD studentship entitled ‘Collaborative Art and Transformation: an exploration of the National Galleries of Scotland outreach programme for disadvantaged young people’ (Rosie Priest).

Her key research interests are the sociology of justice, criminalisation, harm, and punishment; prison abolition and transformative justice; arts and culture; poststructuralist and feminist philosophy; science and technology studies; and collaborative and creative research methods. Alongside more traditional social science approaches, her research methodology includes creative writing, collaging and filmmaking. If you would like to learn more about her work a good place to start is this episode of the Just Humans podcast series presented by Dr Alistair Fraser for the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research: https://soundcloud.com/user-602615510-655495764/just-humans-episode-2-translation-with-dr-phil-crockett-thomas.

From 2021-2022, Phil undertook an ISRF Independent Scholar Fellowship 07: Prison Break: Imagining Alternatives to Prison in the UK, hosted by the University of Glasgow. This project supported activists and scholars engaged in prison abolition and transformative justice to write science fiction imagining more just futures. Building on the political consensus that prison does not diminish social harm, the project used a novel creative method, ‘fictioning’, to re-imagine prison and the future of justice in the UK. You can access resources from the project including a free learning resource Abolition Science Fiction (2022) on the project website: https://abolitionscifi.org/.

From 2017-2022 Phil worked at the University of Glasgow (SCCJR) as the research associate on the Distant Voices project: an ESCR-funded interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative project: https://www.voxliminis.co.uk/projects/distant-voices/. Phil previously lectured in Cultural Studies at the London Contemporary Dance School, Trinity Laban, and the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. She has also worked as a graduate tutor in Criminology and Sociology at Goldsmiths. She has guest lectured at University of Glasgow, Goldsmiths, and the University of Surrey.

Her fiction and poetry has been performed on BBC Radio 4 and published by Ambit, Adjacent Pineapple and SoFi. Her satirical play The Girls Get Younger Every Year (2015) about sexual harassment in higher education has been used internationally as a workshopping tool.

Phil has a PhD in Visual Sociology from Goldsmiths, University of London entitled ‘In Different Voices: A Practice-based Intervention into the Assemblage of Crime’ (2018). She gained an MA with distinction in Postcolonial Studies (2009) from Goldsmiths, and first-class honours in her BA Hons in Dance (2005) from De Montfort University.

Her personal website is https://crowdedmouth.wordpress.com/

Visual and creative methods; poststructuralist philosophy; criminology; sociology of crime; prisons; prison abolition and transformative justice; harm; Gilles Deleuze; science and technology studies; feminist theory; ethics; collaborative research methods; practice-based research.

I teach across the undergraduate and postgraduate modules for sociology and criminology. I co-convene the first-year undergraduate core social sciences module SPCU901: Applying a Sociological Lens.