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Biography
Christina has joined SSP as a Research Assistant in December 2025, working on Lauren Hall and Hannah Wilkinson's research on "Ex-Military Status and Custodial Sentencing Outcomes".
She looks back on 15 years in academic prison research, holding multiple research positions, of which her first one led her into a high-security prison in 2019, examining staff-prisoner relationships and radicalisation together with Prof Alison Liebling and Helen Arnold (Prisons Research Centre, University of Cambridge). Most recently, she was involved in research at the University of Bath, working on an MoJ funded study into "Debt in Prison" and exploring "Serious Harm and Violence in the High-Security Prison Estate" (both led by Prof Kate Gooch). She was a co-author of two evaluations of the effects and benefits of an "Early Days in Custody" intervention delivered by NEPACS in prisons in the Northeast (led by Dr Kate O'Brien, Durham University), and of co-production research on the pains of the IPP-sentence for families (led by Prof Harry Annison, co-funded by the ESRC and the Prison Reform Trust.
Christina completed her PhD at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Leeds in 2020, exploring "Love as Human Virtue and Human Need and its Role in the Lives of Long-Term Prisoners" using a multidisciplinary, social-ecological framework.
Christina's research interests include the pains of imprisonment, the social-ecology of love and violence, multidisciplinary research (including, but not limited to Philosophy, Neurosciences, Sociology, Psychology, Cultural Studies et al.) and prison reform/alternatives to imprisonment.
Expertise Summary
Christina's expertise lies in empirical social and prison research. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies with a focus on Social Anthropology.
Her disciplinary background is ethnography and she is academically trained in qualitative research methods (i.e. semi-structured interviews, participant observation, focus groups moderation, thematic analysis, grounded theory frameworks).
Research Summary
"Ex-Military Status and Custodial Sentencing Outcomes" (PIs: Dr Lauren Hall, Dr Hannah Wilkinson).
Recent Publications
DR CHRISTINA STRAUB and DR KATE O'BRIEN, 2025. Evaluation of NEPACS Early Days in Custody (2). Roll-out in prisons in the Northeast of England. Durham University. (In Press.)
PROF KATE GOOCH, HOLLY DEMPSEY, DR CHRISTINA STRAUB and DR CONOR MURRAY, 2025. Debt in Prison: A Comparative Research 糖心原创 Ministry of Justice. (In Press.)
DR ALEX HALL, PROF DEBORAH PRICE, DR CHRISTINA STRAUB and PROF NICOLA GLOVER-THOMAS, 2025. Ageing and Society. 1-23
DR CHRISTINA STRAUB and DR KATE O'BRIEN, 2023. Final evaluation report of Early Days in Custody. Durham University.