Laura Piacentini is an award-winning Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

A Russian speaker, Laura was the first Westerner to conduct empirical and theoretical research in post-USSR prisons. Her doctorate, funded by the UK research council, the ESRC, was the first PhD to examine incarceration in contemporary Russia, and she has been researching and publishing on this subject for nearly thirty years. Trained as a sociologist, she works across disciplines including human geography, political science, law, and criminology, and has been Co-Investigator or Principal Investigator on several studies of post-Soviet penal culture. Alongside Professor Slade, she led the ESRC-funded project “In the Gulag’s Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving Prisons in the Former USSR,” which explores Russian penal culture from both empirical and theoretical perspectives.

She managed the project through the Covid pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In 2014, Laura, alongside Professor Susan McVie from Edinburgh University's Law School, was the first woman Criminologist in Scotland to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was also selected as a Fellow of “AcademiaNet,” a network for leading European women scholars established during Angela Merkel’s chancellorship.

In 2016, she co-founded the Criminal and Social Justice research cluster at Strathclyde with Professor Beth Weaver and led the University’s partnership with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, where she continues to serve as Associate Director.

From 2015 to 2020, Laura was Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Criminology & Criminal Justice.

Her latest book, published by Routledge in April 2022, is titled The Virtual Reality of Imprisonment in Russia: “Preparing Myself for Prison in a Contested Human Rights Landscape”, is co-authored with Dr Elena Katz (Oxford and Helsinki). It is the first book in the world to focus on how online prison-adjacent communities practice rights consciousness.

• Global Criminology
• Sociology and Social Theory
• Prisons in the former Soviet Union
• International prisons and penal reform
• Prison ethnography and qualitative research methods
• Human rights in prisons

Laura has taught Criminology for nearly thirty years, developing expertise across a wide range of subjects at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and supervising numerous postgraduate students.

Together with Professor Beth Weaver, she established Criminology as a subject within the School of Social Work and Social Policy and continues to play a key role in its development, including designing much of the curriculum integrated across social policy modules.

In January 2022, the MSc in Criminology and Social Policy was launched, delivered by a team with expertise in Criminology, Social Work, and Social Policy.

Laura also supervises PhD students in Criminology, and applications for doctoral research in these areas are welcomed.

Research

Laura’s work is recognised, through her publications, impact, major grant income, and academic awards, as world leading. She is an award-winning, internationally active criminologist whose research on contemporary Russian imprisonment has been ongoing since 1995. She has lived and conducted research in numerous prisons across Russia and is a trained Russian speaker.

Her work is strongly multidisciplinary, involving collaboration and leadership across international teams in sociology, Russian area studies, history, human rights, and political science. She is committed to radical, feminist, creative, and theoretically informed research methods.

Research Grants

Laura has served as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-Investigator (Co-I) on a variety of grants. Her completed and ongoing projects include several major ESRC-funded studies on Russian prisons.

ESRC

• In the Gulag’s Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving Prisons in the Former USSR (2018–2023)
  Principal Investigator (£735k). This was the first study of its kind in global criminology, examining penal culture across former Soviet states.
  Team: Dr Gavin Slade (Lead Co-I, Nazarbayev University); Professor Elena Omelchenko (Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg); Professor Alexei Trochev (Nazarbayev University).
• Regulating Justice: The Dynamics of Compliance and Breach in Criminal Justice Social Work in Scotland (2012–2014, £206k)
  Co-I, with Dr Monica Barry (PI, Law) and Dr Beth Weaver (Co-I, Social Work and Social Policy).
• Women in the Russian Penal System: The Role of Distance in the Theory and Practice of Imprisonment in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (2006–2010, £253k)
  Co-I, with Professor Judith Pallot (PI) and Dr Dominique Moran (Co-I, University of Birmingham).
• Work to Live: The Function of Prison Labour in Russian Prisons (1997–2001, £45k)
  Principal Investigator (ESRC).

AHRC

• The Right to Health in Brazilian and Scottish Prisons (2018–2020, £180k)
  Co-I, with Professor Sally Haw (PI).

Leverhulme Trust

• Towards a Sociology of Rights Consciousness Among Russian Prisoners (£45k)
  Principal Investigator.

Royal Society of Edinburgh

• Criminal Justice in Crisis (2023–ongoing, £10,000)
  With Professors Lesley McAra, Michele Burman, and Susan McVie.
  Project link: https://rse.org.uk/resource/criminal-justice-in-crisis/

University of Strathclyde / University of Waterloo

• Covid Justice – Penal Justice? (2022–2024, £10,000)
  With Professor Sarah Burton, Socio-Legal Studies, University of Waterloo.

Knowledge Exchange

Laura has advised the United Nations and various NGOs on topics including forced labour in prisons (1998), Russian political prisoners (2000-2005), and asylum seekers (2008). She has also provided expertise to the Scottish Parliament on prison rehabilitation (2000).

She has presented papers at institutions such as Nur-Sultan University (Qazaqstan), Harvard University, the Higher Education Institute of Smolensk, and Moscow State University. She has taught at Russian prison-service training colleges, Russian police colleges, and at the Central European University, Budapest.

Recent Knowledge Exchange

• Criminal Justice Leaders Network with Professors Lesley McAra, Michele Burman and Susan McVie with support from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (December 2025)
• “Farmers Have No Freedom” — Uzbek Forum Report on Land, Labour and Farmers’ Rights (June 2025)
  Advisors: Darren McGuire, Laura Piacentini, Michael Combe
  Areas: Work, Employment & Organisation; Social Policy; Law
  Commissioned by: Uzbek Forum for Human Rights (Germany)
  Nature of Work: Review and expert appraisal of the pre-launch report
  Scope: International