Coretta Phillips is a Professor of Criminology and Social Policy. She joined the Department of Social Policy in September 2001, and has been involved in teaching both Criminology and Social Policy in the department at BSc, MSc, and PhD levels. Coretta is a member of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology.
Her research interests lie in the field of race, ethnicity, crime, criminal justice and social policy.
Since 2022, her major research efforts have focused on a multi-disciplinary project providing the first systematic, comprehensive and historically grounded account of the crime and criminal justice experiences of Gypsies and Travellers in England since the 1960s. It comprised: a crime survey; oral histories with serving prisoners and community members; extensive archival research; and interviews with professionals in four diverse regions of England. It filled an evidence gap by shedding light on the only statutorily-defined ethnic group for whom there are no national victimization, hate crime, or self-report offending data. For more information about the project see . Outputs from the project that were designed to facilitate knowledge exchange and impact among non-academic users of research can be viewed in this .
Coretta's previous research in the UK has included work on reflexivity, epistemology and minority perspectives in Criminology and Social Policy; institutional racism; the use of modern slave narratives; doorstep fraud; ethnicity and social relations in men's prisons, the role of minority ethnic professional associations in the criminal justice field, and the study of repeat victimisation. Her recent research has been entirely qualitative using ethnographic methods, life history and semi-structured interviews, photo-elicitation, and narrative methods.
Coretta serves on the editorial board for Oxford University Press' Clarendon Studies in Criminology and as an editor for the Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Criminal Justice. She has been on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Criminology, Punishment and Society, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, and Race and Justice. Coretta has written reports and acted as a consultant for organisations such as the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Inter American Development Bank, UK Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Judicial Studies Board, Clinks, Howard League for Penal Reform, and the Metropolitan Black Police Association.