Dr Victoria Knight

Dr Victoria Knight PhD MA BA (Hons) is a senior research fellow for the Community and Criminal Justice Division in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at De Montfort University. She has expertise and research experience across three core areas: 1) digital technologies use in prisons, 2) emotion and criminal justice and 3) offender education.

Victoria employs a range and mix of methodologies including qualitative and quantitative. Victoria has extensive research experience for engaging ‘hard to reach’ groups in a range of settings; both community and prison. She strives to adopt an ‘appreciate approach’, taking on board people’s situations and difficulties.

Victoria has led and managed a number of research projects and evaluations with respect to basic skills interventions for young offenders. These include an evaluation of the Scratch programme in Leicestershire (2004-7) a subsequent recidivism analysis of this programme (2007-8) and more recently a study into 16+ NEET young offenders for Leicestershire YOS. Another study evaluated the use of restorative approaches in children’s care home setting (2008-2011).

She has completed a range of prison studies including minority ethnic prisoners’ perceptions of the Prison and Probation Service (2004), mass communication consumption in a closed male young offenders’ institution (2000). Her doctoral thesis explored the role of in-cell TV in male adult prisons. Victoria is a member of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Leicester and the editorial board for the Prison Service Journal. Victoria recently secured a book contract to publish this work on in-cell television – Remote Control: Television in Prison, Palgrave Macmillian 2016.

Dissemination of all of this work has occurred through a range of outlets for academics and practitioners.

Victoria’s teaching covers tutoring young offenders media and communication studies as well as to Media and Cultural Studies undergraduates, research methods and sociological theory for Probation and Police Officers, and media and cultural studies to Applied Criminology and Youth and Community undergraduates. Victoria currently supervises five PhD students.

Victoria is convenor of the Emotion and Criminal Justice Cluster at De Montfort University.