Dominic Aitken

Biography

Dominic is a DPhil Candidate in Criminology at Wadham College, researching responses to suicide in prisons and immigration removal centres. This project is supervised by Professor Mary Bosworth and supported by an ESRC 1+3 studentship. At present, he is interviewing organisations that investigate and monitor deaths in custody. 

In 2015, he was a Research Assistant on Professor Bosworth's project Understanding Immigration Detention Staff, which examined the working lives of staff in Heathrow IRC, the UK's largest immigration removal centre. He is currently involved in a knowledge exchange research project comparing immigration detention monitoring across European countries. 

In addition to his doctoral research, Dominic is a Tutor on the Sarah Lawrence Programme at Wadham College, teaching exchange students from the US liberal arts college. He has designed and delivered a seven-week course on Criminology and Criminal Justice. He is also a Student Editor for the Border Criminologies blog and has written several pieces for the Centre for Criminology blog.

Prior to his DPhil, Dominic completed the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice, receiving the Roger Hood Prize for the best performance. His Masters thesis was subsequently shortlisted for the 2016 John Sunley Prize. In 2014, he obtained a First Class Honours LLB from the University of Edinburgh, along with the prestigious Lord President Cooper Memorial Prize, awarded to the top undergraduate in Law. His research interests include the sociology of punishment, migration studies, criminal law and human rights.