Project Title: Rethinking Truancy as a Criminological Concept in the 21st Century.
Truancy laws hold parents accountable for their children's school attendance. In England and Wales, the state can punish parents harshly if their children fail to attend school through hefty fines and imprisonment. Local authorities issued almost 400,000 fines to parents in the 2023/2024 academic year and prosecuted over 38,000 parents in the same time frame, yet we know very little about legal and extra-legal processes underlying the enforcement of truancy laws. My DPhil project aims to understand how truancy prosecutions work in practice, mapping the path to prosecution from its inception in schools, to local authorities who act as prosecutors, and, finally, the magistrates’ court where a parent’s (potentially criminal) fate is decided.
I hold a BA in Law from St John's College, University of Cambridge, where I earned the Larmor Award and Gold Pro Bono Award for my voluntary work with Level Up and Advocacy After Domestic Abuse. Since 2019, I have been an Ask Me Ambassador for Cambridge Women's Aid, raising awareness of domestic abuse through community outreach and fundraising. I have gained valuable legal experience as a trainee solicitor with Vardags and a Public Law and Human Rights paralegal with Irwin Mitchell. I have recently worked as a SEND Teaching Assistant at Impington Village College and a Law Tutor with Oxford Summer Courses. These diverse experiences in the legal world and the education sector have significantly contributed to shaping my research project. I am currently on the 1+3.5 pathway and am deeply grateful to the ESRC Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership for their generous support in funding my postgraduate studies.
