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

DPhil in Geography 2001 (Oxford)

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

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, and is also 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.

Dominique held a Visiting Fellowship at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, in 2011.

Visit Dominique’s own carceral geography websites at www.carceralgeography.com; www.prisonspaces.com, and www.prisonvisitsandrecidivism.com

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.

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

Visiting Doctoral Researchers

• Irene Marti - PhD candidate at the University of Neuchatel, and research assistant at the University of Bern, Switzerland, Irene is undertaking a six month visit to GEES to work in the Carceral Geography Lab with Dominique Moran. Her project, Living the prison: An ethnographic study of indefinite incarceration in Switzerland, is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, who have also funded her overseas institutional visit to Birmingham.

Current Doctoral Researchers

• Ellie Slee (ESRC studentship) The role of prison architecture and aesthetics in the relationship between prisons and host communities (with Yvonne Jewkes - U. Leicester, Peter Kraftl and Sophie Hadfield Hill)
• Tessa Frost (ESRC Studentship) Russia Without Orphans? (with Phil Jones and Irina Kuznetsova)
• Catherine Oliver (with Pat Noxolo)
• Will Thurbin (with Peter Kraftl)

Completed PhDs

• Tom Disney (ESRC Studentship) Orphan Care and Imprisonment in the Russian Federation (with Phil Jones and Jeremy Morris)
• Eleanor Harrowell (ESRC Studentship) Mapping Memories: Improving post-conflict reconstruction through understanding collective memory of conflict (with Jon Coaffee and Adam Ramadan)
• Thom Davies (ESRC studentship) Marginalised communities and governance in Chernobyl, Ukraine (with John Round and Rosie Day)
• Tihomir Topuzowski (School Studentship and Overseas College Studentship), Instrumental territorialisation of the Western Balkans (with Stefan Buzar and Lauren Andres)
• Catherine Harris, (School Studentship) Entrepreneurship amongst Polish migrants in the West Midlands (with John Bryson)
• Georgina Henricksen, (ESRC/CASE Studentship) Understanding the Competitiveness of Business and Professional Service Firms located in the Birmingham City-Region (with Peter Daniels)
• Katsiaryna Padvalkava, (School Studentship), Geography of Pensions and Ageing in Belarus (with John Round)
• Chantal Hales, Women's Entrepreneurship in Senegal (with John Bryson and Peter Daniels)

PhD title

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

Dominique's interdisciplinary research in carceral geography has defined a new field, engaging with criminology, legal studies, prison sociology and psychology to explore carceral practices in a variety of contexts including the UK, Finland, Norway, Denmark and the Russian Federation.

Her work to date has explored the experience of carceral spaces, and their design, the ethics of correctional architecture and the sustainability of prisons with green accreditation or ‘ecolabels’.

Current and recent projects include:

Breaking the Cycle? Prison Visitation and Recidivism in the UK is an ESRC-funded project with criminological psychologist Louise Dixon (VUW New Zealand) and Post-Doctoral Researcher Marie Hutton. This 3-year interdisciplinary project provides a new perspective on prison visitation and its relationship to the highly topical issue of recidivism. Macro-level statistical analysis in parallel with innovative mixed-methods research into visiting facilities identifies the nature of this relationship and its socio-spatial context, informing policy towards visitation and the design of visiting spaces, and contributing to broader debates about prisoner rehabilitation and resettlement.

‘Fear-suffused environments’ or potential to rehabilitate? Prison architecture, design and technology and the lived experience of carceral spaces, is another ESRC-funded project, with criminologist Yvonne Jewkes, and post-doctoral researcher Jen Turner (both U.Brighton), looking at prison design in the UK, Norway and Denmark. The project addresses two over-arching questions – how are penal aims and philosophies (that is, what prison is ‘for’) expressed in prison architecture and design, and how effective is prison architecture, design and technology (ADT) in conveying and delivering that penal purpose? The project studies: the process of designing new prison buildings in order to understand what it is that architects are asked to deliver and how they achieve this; and ADT’s impacts and effects on a range of end users, focusing on the experience of occupying and moving in and around prison spaces, in relation to prisoners’ quality of life and wellbeing, perceptions of penal legitimacy, compliance with the regime, prisoner-staff relations, staff work satisfaction and so on.

Therapeutic Environments for Youth Custody (2016-18)
This project follows an invitation from Amey/Novo to engage in the co-design of activity to inform a need they have identified in relation to creating a therapeutic environment for youth custody in their operationalisation of Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre (STC). 

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

• 2016-18 Economic and Social Research Council, Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) £15,665 (PI), Therapeutic Environments for Youth Custody
• 2015 ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Secondment Grant for work with the Northern Ireland Reducing Offending Directorate, and Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) £19,924
• 2014-15 ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Urgency Grant for work with the Northern Ireland Reducing Offending Directorate, and Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) £2,180
• 2014-2017 ESRC 'Fear-suffused environments’ or potential to rehabilitate? Prison architecture, design and technology and the lived experience of carceral spaces £728,000
• "Milieux de mémoirein Eastern Europe", led by Dr Zuzanna Bogumił Akademia Pedagogiki Specjalnej im. Marii Grzegorzewskiej; Wydział Stosowanych Nauk Społecznych Poland 196,660 PLN (c£39k)
• 2012-2016 ESRC 'Breaking the Cycle: Prison Visitation and Recidivism in the UK' £361,000
• 2012-2015 ESRC Seminar Series 'Exploring Everyday Practice and Resistance in Immigrant Detention' £17,990
• 2011 Visiting Fellowship, Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki 'Welfare, Gender and Agency: Women's Imprisonment in Russia' c4,500 Euro
• 2006-2010 ESRC 'Women in the Russian Penal System: The role of distance in the theory and practice of imprisonment in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia' £303,552
• 2009-2010 Commission of the European Communities (Marie Curie) 'Changing attitudes towards living natural resources in the Russian/Soviet Empire and the exchange of knowledge with Europe: an environmental history perspective'. 127,158 Euro
• 2009 Head of School and Head of College's Award for Excellence in Supporting Student Learning £1000
• 2006-2008 British Academy 'The Cultural Landscape as a Heritage Feature: A comparative study of the UK and Russia' £47,122
• 2004-2005 UK Department for International Development 'Non-State Delivery of Services' £81,632
• 2004 UK Department for International Development 'Governance Reform' £54,138
• 2002 British Academy 'The Kremlin Stars and Soviet Ideology' £2,032
• 2000-2001 UK Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions 'Better Value Development Programme' (Research Fellow)
• 2000-2001 UK Social Exclusion Unit/Joseph Rowntree Foundation 'Local Authorities and Social Exclusion' (Research Fellow)
• 1996-2000 ESRC Postgraduate Studentship, University of Oxford
• 1996-2000 Mortimer May Senior Scholarship, Hertford College, University of Oxford 

Dominique has recently given invited talks in the UK at the Universities of Cambridge, Glasgow, Aberystwyth and Exeter; and further afield in the Space - Society - Economy programme at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Bavaria; at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) at the University of Amsterdam, and the Centre for Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Toronto. She also recently spoke at the Tower of London as part of the Curious connections… design and punishment ticketed event arranged by Historic Royal Palaces.

With Jen Turner (U.Liverpool), Dominique coorganised a series of sessions on carceral geography at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) annual conferences in Chicago (2015), and San Francisco (2016), and in Boston (2017) she will coorganise a further series with Austin Kocher (Ohio State) and Nick Gill (Exeter). In December 2016 she chaired the first International Conference for Carceral Geography, at the University of Birmingham.

Dominique sits on the National Advisory Board of Europe-Asia Studies, 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.

She has also refereed for the AHRC, the ESRC, the RGS-IBG, and for the UK Ministry of Justice, and as well as sitting on the ESRC’s Peer Review College, is an international peer reviewer for the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia.