Ambrose Lee

Ambrose Lee is a political philosopher, working with Professors Andrew Ashworth and Lucia Zedner on the AHRC-funded project ‘Preventive Justice’, which looks at what principles and values should guide and limit preventive action taken by states, and in particular when and in what ways states can and should use the criminal law and criminal law-like instruments as a preventive measure. He is a Research Associate at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and also a guest lecturer for the Division of Law and Philosophy at University of Stirling in Spring 2012 semester lecturing undergraduate jurisprudence.

After completing his BA (Philosophy) at University of Hong Kong in 2006, Ambrose went all the way to Scotland to study for his MLitt in Philosophy with the St Andrews / Stirling Graduate Programme (SASP). Upon completion, he joined the Department of Philosophy at University of Stirling to read for his PhD, which he obtained in 2011 with a doctoral thesis titled "Duties of Minimal Wellbeing and Their Role in Global Justice". Before he joined the law faculty, Ambrose was a lecturer in the Division of Law and Philosophy at University of Stirling lecturing undergraduate metaethics.

Ambrose’s research interests mainly lie in theories of distributive justice, in particular global distributive justice. His doctoral thesis argued for two sets of duties of global justice. On the one hand, there are associative duties of fairness and equality, which are derived from the conception of cooperation at hand. On the other hand, there are universal duties of minimal wellbeing, whose function is to secure a human life for all individuals. The objects of this latter set of duties are developed from a Razian conception of wellbeing.

Besides political philosophy, Ambrose also has a keen interest in metaethics, legal philosophy and moral philosophy. In particular, he is interested in the following issues: value incommensurability, the nature of goodness, the nature of respect, justification of legal punishment, the nature of law, criteria for criminalization, the nature of wellbeing, and its relationship with morality.

When not doing Philosophy, Ambrose likes to scale up rock faces and driving around visiting places.

Caroline Miles is a Research Officer in the Centre for Criminology, working with Dr Rachel Condry on an ESRC-funded project investigating adolescent violence towards parents. She was previously a Lecturer in Criminology and Programme leader for the MA Crime and Justice at the University of Chester, having completed her ESRC-funded PhD at the University of Manchester in 2008. Caroline’s thesis examined substance-related homicide (involving intoxication or systemic circumstances) in England and Wales; drawing upon data from the Homicide Index, police files for solved homicide cases and interviews with convicted homicide offenders.

Prior to her PhD Caroline worked as a Research Assistant for the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness and as a Resettlement Officer for Nacro. She obtained her LLB Honours (first class) degree in Law and Criminology and ESRC-funded MA in Criminology and Research Methods (distinction) from Keele University.

Sharon Shalev, LLM, Ph.D., is a Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for Criminology, London School of Economics and an Associate of the International Centre for Prison Studies. Her research interests include the design, management and regime in high security prisons on both sides of the Atlantic, human rights and prisons, and medical ethics in prison. Over the past 15 years Sharon’s key research interest has been the use of solitary confinement in prisons- in particular the American ‘supermax’ prisons, and she has authored various publications on the subject, including the Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement, a practitioner’s guide to the health effects of solitary confinement and to human rights and professional standards relating to its use. Her book, ‘Supermax: controlling risk through solitary confinement’ (Willan, 2009) has been awarded the British Society of Criminology’s Book Prize for 2010.