Dr Lynsey Black
Biography
Lynsey researches in the areas of gender and punishment, the death penalty, historical and postcolonial criminology, and borders.
In 2022, she was awarded an IRC Starting Laureate for her project 'CONSPACE: Penal Nationalism and the Northern Ireland Border' (IRCLA/2022/2418_BLACK). This is a four-year project which uses archival and participant research methodologies to tease out the meanings of crime, punishment and security at the Northern Irish border over a 100-year period exploring both historical and contemporary instances of penal nationalism at the border. The work brings in the perspectives and approaches of border criminology and penal nationalism.
Previously, Lynsey engaged in research through her IRC New Foundations project, 'Living Borders: Cattle Smuggling on the Ireland/Northern Ireland Border'. This research was done in collaboration with the National Museum of Ireland.
Through summer 2019, Lynsey was a Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, researching the project: 'The Mandatory Death Sentence in Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados: Colonial Legacies and Sovereign Symbols.'
In 2019, along with Prof Claire Hamilton, Lynsey was commissioned to produce a report on confidence in criminal justice systems by the Department of Justice. This report, 'An Evidence Review of Confidence in Criminal Justice Systems, was published in December 2019.
Previous collaborations include a public engagement and knowledge exchange project undertaken with Dr Lizzie Seal (University of Sussex) and Dr Florence Seemungal (University of the West Indies/University of Oxford), and with the United Nations Development Programme in Barbados. This focused on criminal justice reform and reform of the death penalty regimes in Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Lynsey has published in Punishment & Society, Law and History Review, and the Social History of Medicine, and is co-editor of the collection, Law and Gender in Modern Ireland, with Hart Publishing, and Histories of Punishment and Social Control in Ireland (Emerald). Her first monograph, Gender and Punishment in Ireland: Women, Murder and the Death Penalty, 1922-64, was published in 2022 with Manchester University Press.
From 2016 to 2018, Lynsey was an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin. Her postdoctoral research was a comparative, transnational project on capital punishment in Ireland and Scotland from 1864 to 1914.
Lynsey holds an LLB Law from Trinity College Dublin, and an MA in Criminology from Dublin Institute of Technology. She received her PhD from the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Her doctoral research focused on women and the death penalty in post-independence Ireland and was aided by the award of a research bursary from the Irish Legal History Society and an Arthur Cox Fellowship.
Lynsey has previously lectured at Dublin Institute of Technology, and has worked with the Irish Penal Reform Trust and the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice.
In 2022, she was awarded an IRC Starting Laureate for her project 'CONSPACE: Penal Nationalism and the Northern Ireland Border' (IRCLA/2022/2418_BLACK). This is a four-year project which uses archival and participant research methodologies to tease out the meanings of crime, punishment and security at the Northern Irish border over a 100-year period exploring both historical and contemporary instances of penal nationalism at the border. The work brings in the perspectives and approaches of border criminology and penal nationalism.
Previously, Lynsey engaged in research through her IRC New Foundations project, 'Living Borders: Cattle Smuggling on the Ireland/Northern Ireland Border'. This research was done in collaboration with the National Museum of Ireland.
Through summer 2019, Lynsey was a Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, researching the project: 'The Mandatory Death Sentence in Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados: Colonial Legacies and Sovereign Symbols.'
Lynsey recently collaborated on a British Academy-funded project led by Dr Lizzie Seal (PI) (University of Sussex), Dr Bharat Malkani (Cardiff University), Dr Florence Seemungal (University of the West Indies) and Dr Roger Ball (University of the West of England). The project is titled: 'Reforming British law and policy on the global death penalty.'
In 2019, along with Prof Claire Hamilton, Lynsey was commissioned to produce a report on confidence in criminal justice systems by the Department of Justice. This report, 'An Evidence Review of Confidence in Criminal Justice Systems, was published in December 2019.
Previous collaborations include a public engagement and knowledge exchange project undertaken with Dr Lizzie Seal (University of Sussex) and Dr Florence Seemungal (University of the West Indies/University of Oxford), and with the United Nations Development Programme in Barbados. This focused on criminal justice reform and reform of the death penalty regimes in Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Lynsey has published in Punishment & Society, Law and History Review, and the Social History of Medicine, and is co-editor of the collection, Law and Gender in Modern Ireland, with Hart Publishing, and Histories of Punishment and Social Control in Ireland (Emerald). Her first monograph, Gender and Punishment in Ireland: Women, Murder and the Death Penalty, 1922-64, was published in 2022 with Manchester University Press.
From 2016 to 2018, Lynsey was an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin. Her postdoctoral research was a comparative, transnational project on capital punishment in Ireland and Scotland from 1864 to 1914.
Lynsey holds an LLB Law from Trinity College Dublin, and an MA in Criminology from Dublin Institute of Technology. She received her PhD from the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Her doctoral research focused on women and the death penalty in post-independence Ireland and was aided by the award of a research bursary from the Irish Legal History Society and an Arthur Cox Fellowship.
Lynsey has previously lectured at Dublin Institute of Technology, and has worked with the Irish Penal Reform Trust and the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice.
Research Interests
Lynsey researches and publishes in the following areas:
- Gender and punishment
- Magdalen laundries and religious homes as sites of confinement
- Women who kill
- Death penalty
- Death penalty/sentencing for murder in the Caribbean
- Historical Criminology
- Postcolonial criminal justice and punishment
- Media and culture
- Northern Ireland
- Borders
.
Research Projects
Book
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2022 | Lynsey Black (2022) Gender and Punishment in Ireland: Women, Murder and the Death Penalty, 1922-64. Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Link] |
Edited Book
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2023 | Stacy Banwell, Lynsey Black, Dawn K. Cecil, Yanyi K. Djamba, Sitawa R. Kimuna, Emma Milne, Lizzie Seal and Eric Y. Tenkorang (Ed.). (2023) The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence. Bingley: Emerald, [Link] [DOI] | |
2022 | Lynsey Black, Louise Brangan, and Deirdre Healy (Ed.). (2022) Histories of Punishment and Social Control in Ireland: Perspectives from a Periphery. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, [Link] | |
2019 | Lynsey Black and Peter Dunne (Ed.). (2019) Law and Gender in Modern Ireland: Critique and Reform. Oxford: Hart, [Link] |
Peer Reviewed Journal
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2023 | Lynsey Black, Lizzie Seal, Florence Seemungal, Bharat Malkani and Roger Ball (2023) 'The Death Penalty in Barbados: Reforming a Colonial Legacy'. International Journal For Crime, Justice And Social Democracy, online first . [Link] [DOI] | |
2023 | Lynsey Black and Sinéad Ring (2023) 'Historical Gendered Institutional Violence: A Research Agenda for Criminologists'. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 39 (1):17-37. [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2021 | Hamilton C.; Black L. (2021) '‘Strikingly and stubbornly high’: Investigating the paradox of public confidence in the Irish police'. European Journal of Criminology, . [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2021 | Lynsey Black, Lizzie Seal, Florence Seemungal, Bharat Malkani and Roger Ball (2021) 'Editors' Introduction - Legacies of Empire Special Issue'. Punishment and Society, 23 (5):609-612. [Link] [DOI] | |
2020 | Black, L; Seal, L; Seemungal, F (2020) 'Public Opinion on Crime, Punishment and the Death Penalty in Barbados'. Punishment and Society, 22 (3):302-320. [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2020 | Lynsey Black (2020) 'The Pathologisation of Women Who Kill: Three Cases from Ireland'. Social History of Medicine, 33 (2):417-437. [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2018 | Lynsey Black (2018) '‘On the other hand, the accused is a woman’: Women and the Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland'. Law and History Review, 36 (1):139-172. [DOI] [Full-Text] |
Book Chapter
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2023 | Black L.; Doyle D.M. (2023) 'Infant Murder and the Death Penalty in Independent Ireland' In: 100 Years of the Infanticide Act: Legacy, Impact and Future Directions. Oxford : Hart Publishing. | |
2023 | Lynsey Black (2023) ''Women of Evil Life': Donnybrook Magdalene and the Criminal Justice System' In: A Dublin Magdalene Laundry: Donnybrook and Church-State Power in Ireland. Oxford : Bloomsbury. [Link] | |
2022 | Lynsey Black (2022) 'Capital Punishment and Postcolonialism in Ireland' In: Histories of Punishment and Social Control in Ireland: Perspectives from a Periphery. Bingley : Emerald Publishing. [Link] | |
2022 | Lynsey Black (2022) 'Women, Religion and Criminal Justice in Ireland' In: The Routledge Handbook on Women’s Experiences of Criminal Justice. Abingdon : Routledge. [Link] | |
2020 | Rian Sutton and Lynsey Black (2020) 'Detecting the Murderess: Newspaper Representations of Women Convicted of Murder in New York, London, and Ireland, 1880-1914’' In: Constructing Forensic Objectivity from 1850. London : Palgrave. [Link] | |
2016 | Lynsey Black (2016) 'Media, Public Attitudes and Crime' In: The Routledge Handbook of Irish Criminology. Abingdon : Routledge. [Link] |
Other Journal
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2020 | Lynsey Black, Florence Seemungal, and Lizzie Seal (2020) 'British Legacy and the Global Death Penalty' Amicus, 40 :11-14. | |
2019 | Lynsey Black (2019) 'Justice, 2018' Administration: Journal of the Institute of Public Administration of Ireland, 67 (1) . [DOI] | |
2018 | Lynsey Black (2018) 'Murder, Capital Punishment, and the Irish in Scotland, 1864 to 1914' The Irish Jurist, 60 :154-166. | |
2018 | Lynsey Black (2018) 'Justice, 2017' Administration: Journal of the Institute of Public Administration in Ireland, 66 (1) :31-46. [DOI] | |
2017 | Lynsey Black (2017) 'Justice, 2016' Administration: Journal of the Institute of Public Administration of Ireland, 64 (1) . [DOI] | |
2016 | Lynsey Black (2016) 'Justice, 2015' Administration: Journal of the Institute of Public Administration in Ireland, 63 (4) :49-60. [DOI] | |
2015 | Lynsey Black (2015) 'The Representation of Offending Women in the Irish Press: A Content Analysis' Irish Probation Journal, 12 . [Link] |
Published Report
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2019 | Claire Hamilton and Lynsey Black (2019) An Evidence Review of Confidence in Criminal Justice Systems. Department of Justice and Equality, . [Link] |
Blog
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2024 | Lynsey Black (2024) 'Women who kill: “the female poisoner has been particularly reviled”'. [Blog] [Link] | |
2023 | Lynsey Black (2023) Women and the Death penalty in Ireland. [Blog] [Link] | |
2023 | Lynsey Black (2023) The changing role of religious personnel in Irish women. [Blog] [Link] | |
2019 | Lynsey Black (2019) Abortion and Symphysiotomy in Ireland. [Blog] [Link] | |
2017 | Lynsey Black (2017) Male Jealousy & Questions of Sexual Honor: A Look at Historical Cases of Domestic Murder in Ireland. [Blog] [Link] | |
2016 | Lynsey Black (2016) The “worst of the worst?” Dangerous Women in Post-Independence Ireland. [Blog] [Link] | |
2014 | Lynsey Black (2014) Mamie Cadden and the Unlearned Lesson. [Blog] |
Book Review
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2024 | Lynsey Black (2024) Review of In this Place Called Prison: Women's Religious Life in the Shadow of Punishment. [Book Review] [Link] | |
2023 | Lynsey Black (2023) Review of Penal Servitude: Convicts and Long-term Imprisonment, 1853-1948 by Helen Johnston, Barry Godfrey and David J Cox. [Book Review] [Link] | |
2020 | Lynsey Black (2020) Review of The Rise and Fall of the Rehabilitative Ideal, 1895–1970 by Victor Bailey. [Book Review] [Link] [DOI] | |
2018 | Lynsey Black (2018) Review of “Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens” by Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward. [Book Review] [DOI] |
Magazine Article
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2021 | Lynsey Black (2021) Imperial Allegiances. [Magazine Article] [Link] |
Newsletter
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2018 | Lynsey Black (2018) Doing Historical Criminology: A Case from Ireland. [Newsletter] [Link] |
Electronic Book
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2016 | Florence Seemungal, Lizzie Seal, Lynsey Black (2016) Death Penalty and its Impact on the Professionals Involved in the Execution Process. New York: [Electronic Book] [Link] | |
2016 | Florence Seemungal, Lizzie Seal, Lynsey Black (2016) Impact of the Imposition of the Death Penalty on Families of the Convicted in the Caribbean. New York: [Electronic Book] [Link] |
Newspaper Articles
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2024 | Black L, Morrison, J, and others (2024) A return to penal populism will fail Ireland. [Newspaper Articles] [Link] |
Certain data included herein are derived from the © Web of Science (2024) of Clarivate. All rights reserved.
Outreach Activities
Organisation | Type | Description | |
---|---|---|---|
BBC Radio Ulster | Civic Society | BBC Radio Ulster - ‘Crumlin Road Gaol - Escaping Dead or Alive’ - Contributor (2020) [Link] | |
Northern Voices TV | Civic Society | Northern Voices TV - 'History Now' - Contributor (2019) [Link] | |
Newstalk Radio | Civic Society | Newstalk - 'Mary and the Joy' - Contributor (2018) [Link] |
Teaching Interests
LW165 Introduction to Criminal Justice
LW166 Exploring Criminology
LW270 Sentencing and Non-Custodial Alternatives
LW272 Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice
LW166 Exploring Criminology
LW270 Sentencing and Non-Custodial Alternatives
LW272 Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice