Graduate Research Showcase

Locking People Up and Locking Them Out: Prisons and Immigration Control, Then and Now

Two current Keble DPhil students, Laura Haas and Roxana Akhmetova, and a recent Career Development Fellow, Dr Richard Bell, will present their research on aspects of the English security state.

We will learn about the rise and evolution of the security state as concerns debt imprisonment in the 16th and 17th Century, the impact of the recruitment of correctional state from the ranks of military veterans with combat experience, and the increasing use of advanced algorithms with minimal human supervision in immigration and border control. With a better sense of what prisons and the larger security apparatus have been and have become, we will gain a better sense of what they can be.

Dr Richard Bell “Abolition Before the Modern Prison: the campaign against debt incarceration in 16th and 17th Century England”

Laura Haas “Changing Frontlines – the impact of military experience on prison staff in the UK”

Roxana Akhmetova “Human out of the Loop: Advanced Algorithms in Immigration and Border Control”