Prof Shadd Maruna’s book 'Making Good', which turns 25 years old in 2026, is often considered a “pioneering” work of desistance theory and research. In recent publications, however, Maruna argues that this “pioneering” metaphor unfairly erases diverse contributions and over-individualises academic contributions to desistance ideas. That said, he acknowledges that there may be parallels between his alleged “discovering” of desistance and other so-called pioneers who “discover” territories that were already long occupied by indigenous people. In this talk, Maruna seeks to make good for his involvement in such knowledge extraction and imagine a future for desistance research based on knowledge equity and co-production with people with lived experience of desistance.
Professor Shadd Maruna