Congratulations to Vivien Miller

Translating Penal Cultures aims to create a new and unique interdisciplinary and international research network of scholars working on institutions of confinement, practices of crime control, and penal cultures in Russia, India, China, Cuba, Mexico, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Finland, the United States, and countries within the United Kingdom. It seeks to understand the developing language of penality in a variety of cultures and across different time periods and how this connects to the growing globalisation of penal policy and debate of the past 100 years. It applies this knowledge to contemporary security, penal, and crime concerns. It also seeks to balance the social science emphasis and legalistic focus of much prison/penal research with a greater emphasis on the fields of history, language and linguistics, and cultural studies. There are three planned events: an informal one-day inaugural network meeting on March 29 at the University of Nottingham; a more formal two-day research forum with UK-based and overseas scholars in early July 2012 also at the University of Nottingham; and during August 2012, the network intends to join with the National Trust team at Southwell Workhouse to host an exhibit on the workhouse in its international context and which incorporates themes of punishment and punished labour.  Please contact vivien.miller@nottingham.ac.uk for further information.