Laura Abbott

Dr Laura Abbott qualified as a nurse in 1993 and a midwife in 2000 is currently a Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at The University of Hertfordshire and a Fellow of the Royal College of Midwives. Laura’s doctorate examined the experiences of pregnant women in prison: The Incarcerated Pregnancy: An Ethnographic Study of Perinatal Women in English Prisons. She has been publicly recognised as one of the Nation’s ‘lifesavers’ from ‘Made at Uni’ for her research. In September 2020 Laura was awarded the Mildred Blaxter Post-Doctoral Fellowship from The Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness to continue with her research into the experiences of imprisoned pregnant women. Laura is a qualitative researcher with interests including:- pregnancy in prison; experiences of compulsory separations of babies from women involved in the criminal justice system and the mental health of perinatal women. Laura is the co-founder of Pregnancy in Prison Partnership – International (PIPPI) - a new collaboration of leading academics in Australia, USA and New Zealand who work with / are undertaking research into the health and wellbeing of pregnant women and new mothers in prison.