Gwen Ricordeau, PhD

Gwen is an associate professor of Criminal Justice. She joined the department in 2017. She is a native of France where she earned her Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Université Paris-IV Sorbonne. Her research interests include: (1) relatives of prisoners, (2) gender identities and sexuality in prison, and (3) representations (especially in movies and museums) of the penal system. She previously taught in higher education for more than a decade in France and also in the Philippines where she conducted research on intermarriages, marriage migrations, and gender and race stereotypes. As a feminist and a penal abolitionist, Gwen tries to make her teaching and research resonate with her activism and personal experience as a relative of prisoners.

Her recent books include, Crimes et peines. Penser l’abolitionnisme penal (with Nils Christie, Louk Hulsman, Ruth Morris, 2021), and Pour elles toutes. Femmes contre la prison (2019 – under contract with Verso for the English translation). She recently worked as the coeditor of “Contestation et subversion en prison / Struggle and Subversion in Prison” (Champ pénal/Penal Field, 2020, with Joel Charbit) and “Mobilités dans le Sud globalisé : altérité, racialisation et fabrique des identités” (Civilisation, 2020, with Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot and Julien Debonneville).