Dr molly ackhurst BA (Hons), MA, PhD, PGCert, FHEA

• Lecturer in Criminology
• BA (Ext) Criminology and Criminal Justice UGIC Programme Leader
• Centre for Communities and Social Justice Knowledge Exchange and Practice Champion

University of Greenwich Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative Award – as part of the Staff and Student Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Training Team (2025)

VAWGRN – Violence Against Women and Girls Research Network
Abolition Feminism for Ending Sexual Violence Collective
SHAME – Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters
LEX Network – Law, Gender and Sexuality
FGEN –Feminist Gender Equality Network

molly’s research agenda and work explores (i) feminist politics around sexual violence and (2) the real world abolitionist alternatives to the criminal legal system for survivors of sexual violence, as well as the blockages to implementing these changes.

In sitting at the intersections of feminist work on sexual violence, critical sociological work on knowledge production specifically within qualitative methodologies, and cultural work on the political nature of affect her work also encompasses a wide range of topics such as political change, punishment, engagements with the state and critical policy work.

Key funded projects

• (2024-5) Re-imagining justice on campus – University of Greenwich Undergraduate Research Hub
• (2026-27) Brick-by-Brick, Wall-by-Wall: Co-Producing Transnational Feminist Abolitionist Knowledges – Independent Social Research Fund

Online Publications

• ackhurst, m. and Jarvis, F., 2020. “I’m So Triggered”: The cultural co-option of PTSD. Gay Magazine.
  Podcasts
• ‘Sexual Violence and Abolition’, 2023. Surviving Society Presents: The Role of Love in Social Justice Work (an interview with Ez Chigbo)
• 2025 Sticky Emotions in Feminist Research, Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies.
• 2025 Complexifying Carceral Feminism: Interrogating an Emotional Entanglement, Abolitionist Futures.

Articles

• ackhurst, m., Nair, S., and Serisier, T., (in press) Against conferencing-as-usual in times of genocide: Criminology, Complicity, and Sexual Violence in Palestine, Feminist Legal Studies, 0(0).
• ackhurst, m., (2025) Listening, or Led-By: Belief, Innocence and the Risks of a Survivor-Led Feminist Politics, Feminist Theory, 0(0).
• ackhurst, m. (2024). Collaging Carceral Entrapments and Reorienting to the Imagination. Feminist Review, 138(1), 84-98.
• ackhurst, m., 2019. Everyday moments of disruption: Navigating towards utopia. Studies in Arts and Humanities, 5(1), pp.115-128.

Book Chapters

• ackhurst, m., (2025) From One Crisis to the Next: Examining the Relationship Between Police Crises and the British Sexual Violence Sector’s “Need” to Improve the Police, in Davanna, T.  and Rossi, F. Policing in Crisis? Policing & Resistance in the 21st century, Bristol University Press.
• ackhurst, m, Ah-fat , A., Brazzell, M, Caulfield, L., Kim, M. Meiners, E., Mohamed, K., Shirley, L., and Mannoe, M. 2022. Mapping the Networks: An Opening Roundtable on Transnational Transformative Justice’, in Bierria, A., Caruthers, J., and Lober, B., Abolition Feminisms: Organizing, Survival, and Transformative Practice, Haymarket, Chicago.
• ackhurst, m., Brazzell, M., Day, A., Tomlinson, K. and Rodrigues Fowler, Y. 2022. Creative and Transformative Approaches To Justice, in Brown, J. and Horvath, M. Rape: Challenging Contemporary Thinking Second Edition, Routledge, London.

Book Reviews

ackhurst, m. (2025) Disclosing Sexual Violence in a Digital Society: Storytelling, Activism, and Justice by Tully O’Neill, Crime, Media and Culture, 0(0).

ackhurst, m., 2020. Me Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism: by Alison Phipps, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2020, 205 pp.,£ 12.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-5261-4717-2.

Reports

ackhurst m., and Starling, J., 2020. A Resource Kit for Teen Girls Interrupting Sexual Harassment in their Schools and Communities’, LevelUp

Selected Invited Talks, Lectures and Conference Papers

• 2025 Asking Questions of “The Figure of the Expert”: Interrogating the Risks of Feminist Politics’ Investment in Survivor Expertise in Work on Sexual Violence, LEX network online seminar (with Tanya Serisier).
• 2025 ‘Sex Work: It’s Just a Job’: Panel Discussion, LSBU, , London, UK (in discussion with Alex Vitale, Sarah Dorman and Vee Holt).
• 2025 Crisis in the Gender-Based Violence Sector, Bristol Transformed Festival (in discussion with Tanya Serisier).
• 2024 Why Do Feminists Still Trust the Police? Asking Questions of the Imagination and Feminism’s State of Stuckness, SOAS, (in discussion with Leah Cowan).
• 2024 Speaking out about sexual violence: The politics of voice, victimisation and recognition post-#MeToo, BSC, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland (roundtable discussion with Dr Bianca Fileborn, Dr Rachel Loney-Howes, Dr Tully O’Neill and Dr Tanya Serisier).
• 2024 Feminist Entanglements and the State of Stuckness: The Tensions, and Possibilities, of Abolition in Feminist Sexual Violence Work, Oxford University (in discussion with Eleanor Whittingdale).
• 2022 ‘Policing & Gender’, Crime, Harm and Justice Research Group Conference: Policing in Crisis? Policing and Resistance in the 21st Century, LSBU, London, UK.
• 2022, ‘Reflections of the Feminist Imagination’, SCCJR Symposium: Imagined Futures and Utopian Methods, Glasgow
• 2022 Investigating the Impasse: Stuckness, the Sexual Violence Sector and “Justice”, Law Gender and Sexuality (LEX) Network and the Violence Against Women and Girls Research Network Conference: (Re)Connecting on Gender Based Violence, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
• 2022 Circular feelings, Circular stories, Circular solutions: Tracing the Stuckness Within Frontline Sexual Violence Worker Justice Stories and Narratives of Work‘, Law and Society Association Annual Conference, ISCTE University, Lisbon, Portugal.
• 2022 The Productive Character of Carcerality: How are carceral logics producing and shaping critical feminist approaches to sexual violence?, SLSA, York University, York, UK. (with Nic Aaron – co-presenter)
• 2021 Transforming Justice? Gendered Violence and Abolition, New Voices in Global Justice Research Series, Goldsmiths University [online] (with Noush Haghdadi – co- presenter)
• 2021 Carceral Feminism in the UK: Interrogating Our Investments, SLSA, Cardiff University, UK.
• 2020 Crime, Punishment and Feminism: Exploring Feminist Investments in Prisons and Carceral Politics, Good Night Out Project: Good Night In Series, [online]
• 2019 Interrogating the Carcerality in the English Sexual Violence Sector, Transnational Transformative Justice Panel, National Women's Studies Association, (NWSA) Conference, San Francisco, CA.