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While volunteering in a women’s prison, I developed an interest in criminalised women’s experiences of criminal justice settings and this experience led me to pursue a PhD.
I have previously worked with socially marginalised children, faiths groups and individuals with disabilities, mostly in the charity sector. The stories I have heard and the experiences I have made shape my scholarship, teaching and activism.
I teach across the undergraduate and postgraduate social sciences provision at University of Gloucestershire. My teaching covers concepts and ideas around justice and punishment, social inequalities, criminological theories, research philosophies, qualitative research methods, criminal justice policy and practice, imprisonment, alternative justice forms and trauma-informed approaches. I also supervise student dissertations. I am module tutor for:
My academic work spans across the fields of vulnerability studies and studies in social harms. It utilises gender-sensitive frameworks and epistemologies, policy analyses and trauma-informed approaches.
My PhD research focused on Spice harms in women’s prisons. In it I conceptualised Spice harms as emerging within a complex web of factors that contribute to vulnerability. Spice, a synthetic cannabinoid, has been the most commonly found drug in prisons in England and Wales for several years, but my work is the first to examine Spice harms specifically in women’s prisons, using a gender-sensitive and trauma-informed perspective. I mapped how vulnerabilities to Spice harms in women’s prisons are produced and mediated via policy strategies, interventions, and drug practices. I argued that current policies, strategies and interventions are trapped in a support-with-punishment mentality that increases vulnerability and does not consider localised and gendered drug practices and needs within women’s prisons sufficiently. This project drew on policy analysis, and qualitative interviews with women who have been to prison and practitioners who work with women in contact with the Criminal Justice System.
I currently lead a small internally funded research project. This research includes a rapid evidence assessment of trauma-informed service design and delivery approaches in the UK and further afield. This piece of work aims to enhance theoretical and methodical evidence for trauma-informed practice. We also collaborate with a community hub in Oxfordshire to develop and review tools, protocols, policies and practices based on trauma-informed principles and values.
More publications from Dr Niki White can be found in the Research Repository.
Available for media engagement work including radio, TV and documentaries relating to these topics:
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