Katherine Albertson

Katherine joined the team at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice as a lecturer in Criminology Department in 2014. For eight years previous to this, Katherine worked as a Research Fellow, conducting fieldwork in over 30 different prisons, including women's and high security establishments and with offenders on license in the community.

Katherine has just completed an evaluation of Addaction's Right Turn veteran-specific recovery project, funded by the Forces in Mind Trust. Katherine has managed a team of researchers, focusing on establishing the impact on veterans engaging in this holistic, peer-driven initiative.

Katherine has been involved in conducting a further research study with UK military veterans, funded by the British Academy/ Leverhulme grant scheme. This research employed a life history narrative methodology, in order to investigate veterans' pre-enlistment life, military experience and post military transition. This has been conducted to illuminate reflections on significant life events impacting on veterans', continuation and desistance from offending. This study's aims to investigate the potential relationships between identity transition, offending and substance misuse, through the desistance and recovery narratives of ex-military service participants engaging in recovery support services.

Katherine is currently conducting a project involving research and community capacity building activities in consultation with the Armed Forces Community across South Yorkshire. This project is in partnership with Council's in Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham and York St John University. The work is funded through the Armed Forces Covenant fund at the Ministry of Defence, priority 3: 'Strengthening the consistent delivery of the Covenant'. The Sheffield Hallam-led research team is multi-disciplinary, consisting of Sports and Activity staff from Sheffield Hallam, an Economist from Manchester Metropolitan University and a Criminal Justice researcher fro Liverpool John Moores University. The project work involves: 1. Designing an Armed Forces Community-specific mapping survey 2. Delivering 'Military Awareness Training: Understanding Military Culture & Transition' sessions to over 1,000 of South Yorkshire's front-line delivery staff. 3. Area and regional Covenant Action Plan consistency building activities across the four regions and 4. Providing an evaluation of these activities towards achieving the project work aim of: Gaining a better understanding of and communication with our Armed Forces community and strengthening the consistent delivery of the Covenant across South Yorkshire.