Crime, Punishment and Equality

Allen Buchanan has held a constellation of esteemed positions, serving as the Laureate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, a Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford University, and a Visiting Professor of the philosophy of international law at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King's College, London. Additionally, he held the title of James B. Duke Professor Emeritus at Duke University. Throughout his career, Buchanan has played roles in shaping ethical and legal frameworks, serving as a staff philosopher for the President's Commission on Medical Ethics and contributing his insights to the Advisory Council for the National Human Genome Research Institute. Buchanan's scholarly output encompasses six seminal books spanning a diverse array of topics, from the foundational principles of international law to the complexities of social and biomedical ethics.

Lindsay Farmer

Law, Glasgow

Lindsay Farmer is Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, where he has taught since 1999. His research focuses on the history and theory of criminal law, with a particular interest in criminalization and the regulation of markets. He was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2019–2022) for a project on the relationship between criminal law and markets.

He has held visiting positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Toronto, Columbia University, and the University of Sydney. He was Editor-in-Chief of the New Criminal Law Review (2008–2012) and is a member of the editorial boards of Social & Legal Studies, Criminal Law and Philosophy, Law and Humanities, and Law, Culture and the Humanities. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2019 and currently serves as its Vice-President (Publications and Conferences).

Katja Franko is Professor of Criminology at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo, where she has worked since completing her PhD in 2003. Her research focuses on globalization, migration control, border policing, digitalization, and criminological theory. She has led and participated in numerous international research projects, including Crime Control in the Borderlands of Europe (ERC) and NORDHOST: Nordic Hospitalities in a Context of Migration and Refugee Crisis, and is currently working on the project CRIMKNOW on digitalization and private knowledge economies in criminal justice.

She is the author and co-author of several books, most recently Victimhood, Memory, and Consumerism: Profiting from Pablo (Oxford University Press, with David R. Goyes). She is Head of Teaching and Learning at her department and teaches across a range of undergraduate and graduate courses.

She has received numerous awards, including the 2023 Thorsten Sellin & Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck Award (American Society of Criminology), the 2015 Radzinowicz Prize (British Journal of Criminology, with Helene Gundhus), and the 2006 Hart Book Prize (Socio-Legal Studies Association).

She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Chair of the Advisory Board of HEUNI, and President of Triglav – the Slovene association in Norway. She is also co-founder and co-editor of the Routledge series Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship, and serves on the editorial boards of Theoretical Criminology, Crime Media Culture, and Border Criminologies.

Bernard E. Harcourt is Corliss Lamont Professor of Law and Civil Liberties at Columbia University, where he is also a faculty affiliate of African American and African Diaspora Studies, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Department of Political Science. His research spans critical theory, political economy, punishment practices, and legal and social philosophy. He is the founding director of the Initiative for a Just Society at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, which links critical theory with practical legal and policy work.

He is the author or editor of over a dozen books, including Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory (2023), Critique & Praxis (2020), and The Counterrevolution (2018), as well as several works on punishment, surveillance, and legal theory. He has also edited and annotated volumes of Michel Foucault’s lectures, including the Pléiade edition of Discipline and Punish.

Harcourt began his legal career representing individuals on Alabama’s death row and continues to work pro bono on behalf of clients facing capital punishment and indefinite detention. In 2019, he received the Norman J. Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award from the New York City Bar Association.

Before joining Columbia, he held the Julius Kreeger Professorship at the University of Chicago and chaired its Political Science Department. He has held visiting positions at Harvard, NYU, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and currently serves as directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Lewis Ross is a researcher in philosophy and law at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics, where he has worked since 2019. He is currently Director of LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS). He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of St Andrews and previously studied law.

His research focuses on the philosophy of law, especially its intersections with political theory and the social exchange of belief and values. His work often begins with fundamental philosophical questions about justice and extends into empirically informed and policy-relevant scholarship. He also works in metaphilosophy, social epistemology, and legal theory, with recent interests in capacity law.

He is the author of The Philosophy of Legal Proof (Cambridge University Press), and welcomes PhD students and visitors working across moral, legal, and political philosophy, epistemology, and related areas.

Sarah Summers is Professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law and Criminology at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich. She was a member of the Panel Humanities at the Swiss Research Council (SNF) from 2018 until 2023. Her research interests lie in the field of criminal law and human rights. Her research concerns consideration of the empirical realities of criminal justice and of the importance of normative principles underpinning systems of criminal justice in the rule of law. She is co-director of the Digital Society Initiative (DSI), commission member of the Criminal Institute of the Canton of Zurich, a member of the Prosecutorial Regulatory Oversight Commission of the Canton of Basel City. She is also on the Editorial Committee of Quaestio Facti: International Journal on Evidential Reasoning and is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Evidence and Proof.

Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at LSE Law School. She previously held the Chair in Criminal Law and Legal Theory at LSE from 1998 to 2010, returning in 2013 after serving as Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. She is an Associate of the International Inequalities Institute and sits on its Steering Committee, an Affiliate of the Phelan US Centre and a member of its Advisory Board, and serves on the Editorial Board of the LSE Public Policy Review.

Her research focuses on criminal law, legal and social theory, gender, and inequality. She has held visiting appointments at institutions including Harvard Law School and the Australian National University.

She is a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of New College and University College, Oxford, and a former Trustee of the British Museum (2015–2019). Her honours include the Hans Sigrist Prize (2011), a CBE for services to Law, Justice and Gender Politics (2017), and the Law and Society Association’s International Prize (2022).