Professor Nicola Padfield

Position Bye Fellow
School Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty of Law
Email nmp21@cam.ac.uk
Department link Law

Nicola Padfield is Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Penal Justice at the Law Faculty, University of Cambridge and a Bye-Fellow at Wolfson.

After her first degree at St Anne's College, Oxford she came to Cambridge (Darwin College) to study for the Diploma in Criminology. Called to the Bar in 1978, she then spent a year at the University of Aix-Marseille. Her teaching and research have covered a broad canvas in criminal law and evidence, sentencing and criminal justice more generally. She sat as a Recorder (part-time judge) in the Crown Court from 2002-2014, is a Bencher of the Middle Temple and served as the University Advocate for several years. She was appointed as Honorary Queen's Counsel in 2018.

Her books include ‘The Criminal Justice Process: Text and Materials’ (5th edition, 2016); ‘Criminal Law’ (10th edition, 2016), and ‘Beyond the Tariff: Human rights and the release of life sentence prisoners’ (2002). She has edited and contributed to several more recent collections of essays on parole and early release (which have involved research in many European countries). Whilst maintaining a wide academic lens, her recent research has explored how the law on release from, and recall to, prison works in practice, and how it is perceived by offenders and those who work in the system. This under-researched area provides an important contribution to the understanding of how offenders are best supported in their attempts to desist from criminal lifestyles, and how the rehabilitation and resettlement of offenders can be better encouraged. She is also working on a project measuring the effectiveness of coroners’ inquests in reducing the number of deaths of people in custody and under probation supervision.

What's on

Event Type (field_event_type)

Three skeletons depicted in a dance-like pose on a grassy field, from a historic illustration.

The Difficult Joy of Death Activism

30/04/2024 at 17.30

How we can develop ‘death activism’ – a variety of tactics and posthuman practices which celebrate death, its inevitability, its forms, from the slow to times of crisis, and how can trauma and mourning emerge as their own forms of expression, or even activism?

Photograph of Sandi Toksvig, wearing a yellow shirt and leaning against a stone entryway.

Lee Lecture: How to change the world. A quick guide.

01/05/2024 at 18.00

We are delighted to welcome Sandi Toksvig OBE as our speaker for Wolfson's prestigious Lee Lecture this year.

Five colorful hexagons with icons representing law, science, social network, nature, and music.

Wolfson Research Event 2024

02/05/2024 at 09.00

Join us for the 2024 Wolfson Research Event: an interdisciplinary academic conference organised by students to showcase the diversity of the research carried out by Wolfson students.