Wolfson College Cambridge: Dr Ali Wigzell

Position Governing Body Fellow Junior Research Fellow
School Humanities and Social Sciences Institute of Criminology
Email akc36@cam.ac.uk
Department link Institute of Criminology
Phone number 01223 767 276

Ali is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Criminology. Her research focuses on the emotional and ethical dimensions of youth justice intervention, with a particular interest in the place and effects of ‘professional love’ in such contexts.

Ali completed her PhD at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge in 2020. Her PhD examined children’s and practitioners’ experiences and perceptions of court-ordered youth offending service supervision. Following her PhD, Ali became an Affiliated Lecturer at the Institute of Criminology, teaching and supervising undergraduate and graduate students. In October 2021, Ali began a three-year Early Career Fellowship at the Institute of Criminology, which is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and Isaac Newton Trust.

Prior to and alongside her PhD, Ali worked as a Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck, University of London. She remains an Associate Research Fellow there. Before joining the ICPR, Ali was a Senior Researcher at the Westminster think-tank the Centre for Social Justice.

In January 2021, Ali became Book Review Editor at the international journal Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Ali’s research interests include youth justice, the professional relationship, community supervision, and desistance from offending. Ali’s current research project examines the contours of care and its ethical dimensions in the youth justice (child–worker) professional relationship, through an ethnographic and participatory approach. A particular interest is in the place and nature of professional love and ‘mutuality in caring’ in such relations, topics that have received scarce attention in the criminal justice literature but are emerging areas of scholarship across youth work, social work, and psychotherapy.

The study will employ care ethics, a strand of moral philosophy, which prioritises caring relations and an appreciation of context in decision-making, but simultaneously advocates the ‘moral scrutiny’ and evaluation of ‘care’. In applying the lens of care ethics to youth justice for the first time, Ali hopes to deepen understanding of caring relations, their ethical complexities and effects in this involuntary context. In doing so, the project intends to deepen insight into the moral terrain of the youth justice realm, and the relationship between care, well-being and desistance.

In line with her interests, Ali is currently a Trustee of charity the National Association for Youth Justice and an Advisory Board Member of charity, Peer Power UK. She chaired the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (now the Alliance for Youth Justice) from 2016-2019 and remains an alliance member.

What's on

Event Type (field_event_type)

Image 'Barbarians under the rug' by Enej Gala

Art Exhibition: 'After News Before Bed'

20/04/2024 at 10.00

Visit Wolfson's latest exhibition 'After News Before Bed' featuring work by emerging artist Enej Gala, winner of the Wolfson Royal Academy Schools Graduate Prize.

Photo of speaker, Catherine Namono, on a rock during her research

'Sex'-on-the-rocks: Geometric rock art and musical expressions amongst the African Pygmy forest hunter-gatherers in search of 'balance', 'harmony'

22/04/2024 at 13.00

How does the interpretation of geometric rock art in Uganda shed light on the societal and cultural experiences of African Pygmy forest hunter-gatherers?

Modern office building with large glass windows surrounded by lush greenery and trees under a cloudy sky.

Cambridge Science Park Visit

25/04/2024 at 11.00

Dive into the Cambridge innovation ecosystem with a visit to the Cambridge Science Park.

Multicolored silhouettes of human heads in a collage forming a concept of diversity or population.

The Place of Antigypsyism within Debates on Racism

25/04/2024 at 17.00

This event is the third of three roundtables that Wolfson's REACH Research Hub will be organising over the academic year under the heading ‘Hierarchies of Racism?’