Laura Haas

Laura completed her Doctorate at the Centre for Criminology in 2026. In her thesis, she examined how military experience shapes the actions and attitudes of prison officers in England and Wales. Specifically, she investigated the continuity of military culture, emotional ramifications from military deployments, and the continued impact on ex-military prison personnel’s identity, with particular attention to masculinity. Her project was supervised by Prof. Mary Bosworth and Prof. Hindpal Singh Bhui and funded by the Law Faculty and the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich scholarship fund.

Laura also holds a BSc in Psychology from the Freie Universität Berlin (2018) and an MSc in Legal Psychology from the Medical School Berlin (2020), which she completed with distinction. Additionally, she completed the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Oxford (2021).

Laura is currently a Research Fellow on Prof. Philippa Tomczak’s project RECEDE (REgulating Criminal justicE Detention: glocal prospects for public health and societal safety) at the University of Nottingham, funded by the European Research Council. She researches the regulation of deaths in prison and police custody, with particular attention to the intersection of race, class, and gender.

During her DPhil, she worked as a research assistant on various projects, including on the Vulnerable State Project at the University of Warwick and on a project with Prof. Mary Bosworth in which they developed and analysed a staff survey on ‘staff culture’ for private security contractors who deport, transport and detain people held under Immigration Act powers in the UK.

Laura also accumulated teaching experience, having taught 'Theories of Crime' and 'Dealing with Drugs: Control and Intoxication' at Oxford Brookes University to undergraduate law students in 2023, an 'Introduction to Psychology' course for a summer school programme at the University of Cambridge for the past 3 years, and guest lectures at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford University and Regents University (London).