About

I am a sociologist and writer of fiction and poetry. Currently, I am researching and writing about responses to social harm, imagined futures, utopia, and cultural representations of justice issues. Since 2022 I have been a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Stirling and have previously taught at the London Contemporary Dance School, the University of Glasgow, and Goldsmiths, University of London among other places. My students at Stirling make a podcast about crime and justice, and art and culture called Just Images.

From 2021-2022 I held an Independent Scholar Fellowship funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF). My project was called Prison Break: Imagining Alternatives to Prison in the UK. You can read more about it here. From 2017-2021 I worked as the Research Associate on Distant Voices, an ESCR and AHRC-funded project. A list of my academic and creative publications is available here (most of them are open-access). I have had my fiction and poetry published by Granta, BBC Radio 4, and Ambit among other places, and journalism by the London Review of Books, Dance Theatre Journal and Open Democracy. In 2026, I became the first Media Editor for the journal Crime, Media, Culture, so please get in touch if you are developing some creative research for publication along the journal’s themes.

I have previously published as Philippa Thomas and Phil Thomas.