Dr Becka Hudson

Overview

Biography

Becka Hudson is a postdoctoral researcher at Birkbeck’s School of Historical Studies. Starting out in anthropology, Becka's work uses history, anthropology and criminology to look at the interaction between psychiatry and imprisonment. She works on the UKRI funded project Cognitive Behavioural Therapies in Britain: Welfare, Society and the Individual since 1948, led by Dr Sarah Marks. Becka's part of this project investigates the use of cognitive behavioural therapies (CBT) in ‘offending behaviour change’ courses.

Her PhD, completed at Birkbeck’s Criminology Department, investigated the diagnosis and management of ‘personality disordered offenders'. Becka brings ethnography and archival work together to situate social practices in political-economic and global context. Becka is a former Associate Editor of Law and Critique, former Associate Lecturer in Criminology and is a founding member of Birkbeck’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health.

Prior to working at Birkbeck, Becka worked with grassroots campaigning organisations on issues of housing, culture, imprisonment and policing. She continues to be involved in campaigning. She has regularly appeared in broadcast media to discuss current issues in criminal justice and has guest lectured about her research internationally. 

Research

Research interests

• Imprisonment
• Critical psychiatry
• British colonial psychiatry
• Political economy of punishment / Marxist understandings of 'carcerality'
• Ethnography and action research
• Anthropology of trauma

Research Centres and Institutes

• Member, Centre for Political Economy and Institutional Studies
• Founding steering group member, Birkbeck Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health
• Centre for Medical and Health Humanities