Sam Poyser

Sam is a senior lecturer at Aberystwyth. She specialises in miscarriages of justice, media portrayal of victims and the more general experiences of victims of crime, including victims of animal abuse, farm crime, rural crime and wildlife crime.

Sam's primary area of research is miscarriages of justice and she has published extensively within this field. Her most recent research for her PhD thesis, entitled 'Watchdogs of the wrongly convicted: the role of the media in revealing miscarriages of justice', investigated the role of journalists in revealing wrongful convictions in England and Wales from the 1960s through to the present day.

Sam's research in this area, is in part driven by Walker and Starmer's (2002) rights-based theory of miscarriages of justice, (thereby adopting a broad definition of the phenomenon to include, not only wrongful convictions, but many other forms, including failures on the part of the CJS to act/ 'do enough' in criminal cases). It is also driven by the notion that victims of miscarriages of justice are 'voiceless victims'. This focus, has more recently led to her increasing interest in another, much neglected group of 'victims', namely victims of animal abuse, wildlife crime, farm crime and rural crime in England and Wales.