My research interests are focused in the areas of criminal law and criminal justice. I am currently exploring the socio-legal responses to women who commit serious offences, including homocide and sexual violence. More generally, I am also interested in violence against women, domestic violence, sexual offences and criminal legal and gender theory.

'A Feminist Legal Engagement with Women Who Kill'

Siobhan's research will examine some of the socio-legal constructions of women who kill. Currently women who kill fall into something of an abstract category; they are 'not men'. Research has shown that men commit the vast majority of crime, as well as committing the most serious crimes. When women commit crime, they violate some of the prominent feminine gender norms ascribed to women by socio-legal discourse of appropriate femininity, in the realms of domesticity, sexuality and motherhood. As a result, when women commit particularly heinous crimes such as murder, the institution of law not only judges them based on the evidence of the crime they have committed, but also on their deviance from appropriate feminine behaviour. Consequently, Siobhan's research will focus on the construction of the category of ‘woman’ within the institution of law and how this construction affects the institutional responses to the actions of these women.

Siobhan is Assistant Dean of Lonsdale College.