@DrAmandaHolt

@amandaholt.bsky.social 

Amanda joined the University of Roehampton in September 2014 from the School of Law, Lancaster University. She previously worked at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth and, prior to her PhD scholarship, worked as a Research Officer at the Trust for the Study of Adolescence.

Amanda’s research broadly addresses issues that concern families, young people and harm. Her most recent book, Family Criminology: An Introduction (Palgrave, 2021) introduces a new sub-discipline to the field of Criminology to understand how crime and the family intersect across a range of criminological problems. These include the criminalisation of parents, the impact of incarceration on families, the longevity of organised crime families, domestic abuse and family homicide, the impact of victimisation on families, and the role of family campaigns on the criminal justice system. 

Much of Amanda's research in recent years has focused on the problem of adolescent family violence. Amanda is the author of the UK’s first book on the topic, Adolescent-to-Parent Abuse: Current Understandings in Research, Policy and Practice (Policy Press, 2013) and she is also the editor of Working with Adolescent Violence and Abuse towards Parents: Approaches and Contexts for Intervention (Routledge, 2016). Amanda has completed several research projects on adolescent family violence, and has worked with the UK Home Office to produce the first UK policy guidance on the issue.

Amanda's research has been funded by the AHRC, the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, the European Commission, and the Mayor's Office for Policing & Crime, amongst others. She has delivered international keynote speeches and she regularly provides expert commentary to international media outlets including BBC News,  Newsnight, Women’s Hour, The Times and The Guardian. She recently contributed to two episodes of BBC Radio 4's File on Four (listen here and here) and also appears in Sky Crime's Killing Mum and Dad and Channel 5's Killer at the Crime Scene. 

Amanda is a member of the Risk of Harm committee at Family Lives and she sits on the advisory board for PEGS. Amanda welcomes enquiries from the press and from potential doctoral students on topics related to families, young people and criminal justice.

BA (Hons) Applied Psychology; MSc Psychological Research Methods; PhD Applied Social Science

From a psychology background, I apply an interdisciplinary approach to my work and draw on a range of methodologies. Key areas of research interest include:

• Domestic/family violence and homicide
• Families and youth justice
• Schools, violence and wider harms 
• Qualitative methodologies
• Sensory criminology

PhD Supervision

Current supervision projects include:

• The family justice system in England and Wales: Child contact, domestic violence and women’s rights (Ruth Tweedale).
• Dramatherapy with grandparent kinship carers (Lynn Engler)
• Understanding child to parent violence in the context of attachment and family dynamics (Brent Plant)
• A critical ethnography into the educational provision for children and young people with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD) (Mehreen Begg).

• Member of the British Society of Criminology
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)
• Member of Risk of Harm committee at Family Lives
• Advisory Board member at PEGS