Dr Marian Duggan

Dr Marian Duggan (SFHEA) is Reader in Criminology and Director of Studies for the new MA Criminology launching in 2025. 

She is the editor of Revisiting the ‘Ideal Victim’: Developments in Critical Victimology (Policy Press, 2018) and author of Queering Conflict: Examining Lesbian and Gay Experiences of Homophobia in Northern Ireland (Ashgate 2012/Routledge 2016). She also co-authored Administrating Victimisation: The Politics of Anti-Social Behaviour and Hate Crime Policy with Dr Vicky Heap (Palgrave, 2014) and was a co-editor of Values in Criminology and Community Justice (Policy Press, 2013). 

Prior to arriving at Kent, Dr Duggan was Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University (2009-14). Dr Duggan completed her PhD, the first socio-legal exploration of lived experiences of homophobia in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, at Queen’s University Belfast (2010). 

Media

Dr Duggan is a regular contributor to BBC Radio Kent, speaking about issues relating to crime, gender, and harm. She has also featured on BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Politics South East, The New York Times, The Guardian, Moral Maze and has provided expert consultancy for several documentaries. 

Dr Duggan’s research informs policy and practice responding to and reducing sexual, gendered, and hate-based victimisation. Her main interests are: Clare’s Law (the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme); intimate partner violence; misogyny / gender as a hate crime; and institutional responses to campus-based sexual victimisation.

Dr Duggan’s empirical research into Clare’s Law explores stakeholder perspectives on the efficacy of this information-sharing approach to domestic abuse prevention. She has published in the International Review of Victimology and the Journal of Gender-Based Violence, and provided expert consultancy to the Home Office while updating the statutory DVDS guidance. Relatedly, Dr Duggan’s current research examines augmented safeguarding processes based on exploring how domestic abuse service providers pivoted to continue supporting victims during COVID-19. 

Dr Duggan collaborated on two Home Office funded projects exploring the perpetration of intimate partner abuse. The first, conducted with colleagues at Kent, featured a mixed-methods study exploring technology-facilitated intimate partner violence. The second, undertaken with colleagues at Trinity College Dublin, assessed risk and protective factors for bisexual intimate partner violence, published in Trauma, Violence & Abuse.  

Through her research into misogyny / gender-based hate crime, Dr Duggan has contributed to Law Commission reviews on hate crime provisions in England and Wales and provided expert consultancy as part of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) design of criminal justice responses to gender-based victimisation across Europe. 

Dr Duggan has also been involved in activities aimed at addressing campus-based sexual victimisation and misconduct over the past decade. This has involved establishing and evaluating a range of initiatives at Kent, while her recent collaboration with colleagues in the Universities of York and Gloucester to explore variations in institutional responses to sexual misconduct in higher education environments was published in Social Sciences. Dr Duggan serves as Publications Chair for the British Society of Criminology, where she published cross-institutional criminological research into sexual misconduct in the higher education sector. 

Dr Duggan is Module Convenor for SOCI3050 Introduction to Criminology and takes lectures relating to gender, sexuality, victims, and feminism across several undergraduate and postgraduate modules. She is a firm believer in effecting social justice through reflective, transformational pedagogy therefore is a qualified facilitator for SOCI7470 Issues in Criminology: The Inside-Out Programme.

Dr Duggan is currently supervising a range of exciting and innovative doctoral projects addressing international and domestic socio-legal responses to gender, sexuality and victimisation. 

Current PhD students

• Shane Thiara: victim advocacy support for South Asian domestic abuse victims
• Yelam Kim: the police as a gendered organization in South Korea
• Eylul Dimech: the legal and social implications of Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on efforts to prevent violence against women in Turkey
• Vanisha Jassal: female intra-familial child sexual abuse within the British South Asian population

• Series Editor for Bristol University Press Gender and Crime in a Globalised World
• British Society of Criminology Executive Committee member (Publications Chair)
• Rising Sun Domestic Violence & Abuse Charity Trustee (Vice-Chair and EDI Chair)
• Gender, Sexuality and Culture Research Cluster Member and recent Chair

Dr Duggan has previously held Executive Committee positions with the Kent Sexual Violence Against Students Steering Group; Femininsts@Law; the International Network for Hate Studies; the Socio-Legal Studies Association; the British Journal of Community Justice; and HEReNI (formerly LASI).

Dr Duggan’s previous statutory and third sector partnership working has included roles with Circles UK; the Sheffield Domestic Abuse Helpline; South Yorkshire Stop Hate UK; and with South Yorkshire Police.