Birkbeck announces new Director of the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research
The overarching aims of ICPR’s work are to produce and disseminate knowledge about justice, and thereby to inform public and political debate, and to contribute to improvements in policy and practice.
Dr Mai Sato has been appointed as the new Professor and Director of Birkbeck’s Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) and is due to take up the position in February 2025. As ICPR Director, Mai will lead and oversee ICPR’s programme of academically grounded, policy-oriented research on crime and justice.
Mai is a social scientist by training and currently an Associate Professor at Monash University in Melbourne, where she heads Eleos Justice, an initiative to end the death penalty in Asia. She was also appointed this month by the United Nations Human Rights Council to the role of Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Mai Sato commented: “ICPR holds a special place in my career as a criminologist. I completed my PhD under Professor Mike Hough, the founder of ICPR. I was an ICPR research fellow when ICPR merged with the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS), where I had been an intern before my PhD. I also witnessed the change in leadership from Professor Hough to Professor Jessica Jacobson. I’m delighted to have been appointed as ICPR’s Director and I very much look forward to leading the institute into its future and continuing the vital work of Professor Jacobson and her team to improve the integrity of justice systems globally.”
The current Director, Professor Jessica Jacobson, will be handing over after an eleven-year tenure, and will remain at ICPR as Professor of Criminal Justice. Jessica said: “The wealth of expertise and knowledge that Mai will bring to ICPR is hugely valuable. She is extremely well-placed to develop and expand ICPR’s portfolio of applied research on crime and justice. I wish her all the best in her new role.”
Professor Matthew Davies, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of Urban History at Birkbeck, added: “I’d like to express my thanks and gratitude to Jessica for her dedication and hard work over the past 11 years, and for leading ICPR to where it is now as a centre of world-class legal research and scholarship.
“We’re delighted to welcome Mai to Birkbeck, as the new director of ICPR. All of us in the Faculty are looking forward to working with her as she leads the institute into the next exciting phases of its important work.”
Mai has a PhD from King’s College London. She relocated to Australia in February 2019 to join the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Prior to this, she worked at the School of Law, University of Reading; and the Centre for Criminology of the University of Oxford. She began her academic career as a Research Fellow at ICPR.