Author Biography

Dr Paula McLean completed her PhD at the University of Wolverhampton in 2024. She is a former Probation Officer and her current role is that of a Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice at Sheffield Hallam University. Her thesis was concerned with examining the experiences of Black women that have been through the criminal justice system (CJS) using their personal narratives. Her interest was piqued through her career as a Probation Officer and a Black woman witnessing the disparities and the disregard of academia, government and their state agencies to address them and more crucially, the invisibility and silenced voices of this group of women. The poster is based on the presentation she gave at the ‘Race’ and Socially Engaged Research conference in 2024 analysing varying forms of Black women’s activism in prisons that emanated from the PhD thesis. This theme will be discussed in a book due to be released in January 2026 entitled ‘Women, Relationships and Criminal Justice: The Personal and Professional.’ 

Ethics and Funding Statement

No ethical approval was required for this research and no funding is reported by the author.