Professor Dominique Moran DPhil

Professor Dominique Moran

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Professor in Carceral Geography

Contact details

Address
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dominique Moran’s research and teaching is in the sub-discipline of carceral geography, a geographical perspective on incarceration. Supported by the ESRC, her research has informed and extended theoretical developments in geography, criminology and prison sociology, whilst interfacing with contemporary debates over hyperincarceration, recidivism and the advance of the punitive state. She is currently researching the impact of nature contact on prisoners' wellbeing and the experience of ex-military personnel working in the prison service.

Dominique is Co-founding Chair of the Carceral Geography Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers.

She is author of 'Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration' (2015) and an editor of Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past (2015), ‘Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention’ (2013), Carceral Spatiality: Dialogues between Geography and Criminology (2017) and 'The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family' (2019). She publishes in leading journals including Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, and Theoretical Criminology.

Dominique Moran on The prison-military complex and ex-military personnel as prison officers; 

Qualifications

Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education 2006 (Birmingham)

DPhil in Geography 2001 (Oxford)

BA(Hons) Class I in Geography 1995 (Oxford)

Biography

Dominique Moran studied Geography at Oxford, graduating in 1995 with a First Class BA(Hons) and the Gibbs Prize, and in 2000 with a D.Phil (thesis title: Russia's Emerging Margins - the Transition in the north of Perm oblast). Her PhD work was amongst the first to explore post-socialist transformation in the geographically marginal areas of the Russian near-North. She carried out fieldwork in former 'special settlements', part of the Stalinist Gulag, and in communities proximate to contemporary prison colonies.

She then moved to a Research Fellowship at Warwick Business School (2000-01) working on social exclusion and organisational change in the UK funded by the (then) UK Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) and the Social Exclusion Unit, before joining the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham where she was Lecturer in Rural Poverty and Development until 2004. At IDD she carried out policy-oriented research into HIV/AIDS, governance reform and service delivery, primarily for the UK Department for International Development, and worked closely with DfID Governance Advisors in country offices.

Dominique joined the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences in 2004 as a Lecturer. She held a Visiting Fellowship at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, in 2011, and was promoted to Chair in 2018. She is Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a member of the European Society of Criminology, and a member of the Global Prisons Research Network, a multi-disciplinary network for scholars worldwide researching prisons and other institutions of confinement – from the everyday life of specific institutions, to the wider political impact of penal policy changes.

 

 

Teaching

Year 3 Carceral Geographies

Dominique’s teaching is research-led, student-centred and has been recognised as high quality via the 2009 Head of School’s and Head of College’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Supporting Student Learning, GEES and LES, University of Birmingham, and the University of Birmingham Higher Education Futures Institute (HEFi) Award for Research Intensive Learning and Teaching, 2018. She was nominated by students for an Outstanding Teaching Award for the College of Life and Environmental Sciences in 2019, and for a University Award for Excellence in Doctoral Supervision in 2012 and 2017.

Dominique holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCert), Birmingham 2006 and has published the following peer-reviewed teaching publications:

  • Moran, D & Round, J (2010) A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma: Teaching post-socialist transformation to UK students in Moscow, Journal of Geography in Higher Education 34(2) 265-282 Available for download
  • Moran, D (2009) Teaching post-socialism, twenty years on, Planet (22) 39-41 Available for download

Postgraduate supervision

Carceral Geography

Doctoral research

PhD title
Russia's Emerging Margins - the Transition in the north of Perm oblast'

Research

Dominique Moran’s research and teaching is in the sub-discipline of carceral geography, a geographical perspective on incarceration. Her research in the UK, Russia and Scandinavia, supported by the ESRC, has contributed to her transdisciplinary work, informed by and extending theoretical developments in geography, criminology and prison sociology, but also interfacing with contemporary debates over hyperincarceration, recidivism and the advance of the punitive state.

Dominique was Founding Chair of the Carceral Geography Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, 2017-2020, amd remains a member of the CGWG Committee.

She is author of 'Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration' (2015) and an editor of Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past (2015), ‘Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention’ (2013), Carceral Spatiality: Dialogues between Geography and Criminology (2017) 'The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family' (2019) and 'The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design' (2022) She publishes in leading journals including Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Annals of the American Association of Geographers and Theoretical Criminology.

Dominique's current and previous research activities have been supported as follows:

Other activities

Dominique has given invited talks at the Universities of Melbourne, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Glasgow, Aberystwyth, Exeter, Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Amsterdam, and Toronto. She has also spoken at the Tower of London (for Historic Royal Palaces), and at the Howard League for Penal Reform.

She has co-organised numerous series' of sessions on carceral geography at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) annual conferences in Boston (2017), San Francisco (2016), Chicago (2015), Tampa (2014), Los Angeles (2013), Seattle (2011) and Washington DC (2010); at the RGS-IBG in 2012, 2014, and 2019, and also at the Nordic Geographers Conference, and the European Society of Criminology.  She chaired the first 1st and 2nd International Conferences for Carceral Geography at the University of Birmingham in 2016 and 2017, and gave a keynote address at the 3rd, at the University of Liverpool in 2018.

Dominique sits on the Advisory Board for Incarceration: An international journal of imprisonment, detention and coercive confinement and reviews for prominent Geography journals including Progress in Human Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers; Environment & Planning: D; Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, leading Area Studies journals including Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics; Sociology journals including International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, and leading criminology journals such as Theoretical Criminology.

Dominique gave the first seminar in an online series organised by the Evidence and Partnerships Hub, part of the Data Analytical Services Directorate at the Ministry of Justice. She addressed over 85 MoJ analysts who collate research evidence to inform policy.

Dominque also presented as part of a seminar organised by the Insights Group, part of the Strategy, Planning & Performance Directorate at Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. This sell-out event, with over 230 virtual attendees across the prison estate of England and Wales, was focused on prison environments. In both talks, Dominique drew on her recent work with Phil Jones, Amy Porter and former GEES colleague Jacob Jordaan (now U.Utrecht), which demonstrates a link between greenspace and wellbeing in prison.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Moran, D, Jewkes, Y, Blount-Hill, K-L & StJohn, V (eds) 2022, The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology, 1 edn, Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11972-9

Article

Moran, D, Jordaan, J & Jones, P 2024, 'Toxic prisons? Local environmental quality and the wellbeing of incarcerated populations', Land, vol. 13, no. 2, 223. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13020223

March, E, Moran, D, Houlbrook, M, Jewkes, Y & Mahlberg, M 2023, 'Defining the Carceral Characteristics of the ‘Dickensian prison’: A Corpus Stylistics Analysis of Dickens’s Novels', Victoriographies, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 15-41. https://doi.org/10.3366/vic.2023.0477

Moran, D, Jordaan, J & Jones, P 2023, 'Green space in prison improves wellbeing irrespective of prison/er characteristics, with particularly beneficial effects for younger and unsentenced prisoners, and in overcrowded prisons', European Journal of Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/14773708231186302

Moran, D & Turner, J 2022, 'Carceral and military geographies: prisons, the military and war', Progress in Human Geography, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 829-848. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325221080247

Moran, D, Jones, P, Jordaan, JA & Porter, A 2022, 'Nature contact in the carceral workplace: greenspace and staff sickness absence in prisons in England and Wales', Environment and Behavior, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 276-299. https://doi.org/10.1177/00139165211014618

Moran, D, Houlbrook, M & Jewkes, Y 2022, 'The persistence of the Victorian prison: alteration, inhabitation, obsolescence, and affirmative design', Space and Culture, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 364-378. https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312211057036

Turner, J, Moran, D & Jewkes, Y 2022, '“It’s in the air here”: atmosphere(s) of incarceration', Incarceration, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/26326663221110788

Turner, J & Moran, D 2021, 'Bridging the Gap? Ex-military personnel and military-civilian transition within the prison workforce', Armed Forces & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211039879

Ricciardelli, R, Andres, E, Mitchell, MM, Quirion, B, Groll, D, Adorjan, M, Siqueira Cassiano, M, Shewmake, J, Herzog-Evans, M, Moran, D, Spencer, DC, Genest, C, Czarnuch, S, Gacek, J, Cramm, H, Maier, K, Phoenix, J, Weinrath, M, MacDermid, J, McKinnon, M, Haynes, T, Arnold, H, Turner, J, Eriksson, A, Heber, A, Anderson, G, MacPhee, R & Carleton, N 2021, 'CCWORK protocol: a longitudinal study of Canadian correctional workers’ well-being, organizations, roles and knowledge', British Medical Journal Open, vol. 11, no. 12, e052739. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-052739

Moran, D, Jones, P, Jordaan, JA & Porter, A 2021, 'Does nature contact in prison improve wellbeing? Mapping land cover to identify the effect of greenspace on self-harm and violence in prisons in England and Wales', Annals of the American Association of Geographers, vol. 111, no. 6, pp. 1779-1795. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1850232

Moran, D, Jones, P, Jordaan, JA & Porter, A 2021, 'Does prison location matter for prisoner wellbeing? The effect of location within greenspace on self-harm and violence in prisons in England and Wales', Wellbeing, Space and Society, vol. 3, 100065. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wss.2021.100065

Moran, D & Turner, J 2021, 'Drill, discipline and decency? Exploring the significance of prior military experience for prison staff culture', Theoretical Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211031248

Moran, D & Turner, J 2021, 'How many prison officers are ex-military personnel? Estimating the proportion of Armed Forces leavers within the prison workforce of England and Wales', The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice .

Chapter

Moran, D, Jones, P, Jordaan, J & Porter, A 2022, Does nature contact in prison improve wellbeing? Greenspace, self-harm, violence and staff sickness absence in prisons in England and Wales. in D Moran, Y Jewkes, K-L Blount-Hill & V St John (eds), The Palgrave handbook of prison design. 1 edn, Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 657-678. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11972-9_23

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Prison design; prison visitation and recidivism; imprisonment in Russia; carceral space.

Expertise

Prison reform; prison architecture and design; therapeutic and rehabilitative approaches to custody; youth custody; imprisonment of women; penal systems of UK, Russia, Scandinavia; prison visitation and family contact; factors in recidivism; the conversion, renovation and repurposing of former prisons;  prison-community relations; imprisonment and environmental sustainability; history of imprisonment and prisons both during and after conflict.