Dr Cara Hunter she/her

Dr Cara Hunter teaches across criminology and sociology subject areas at the University of Edinburgh.

She completed her PhD titled ‘Debating the Future of Scottish Imprisonment, 2008-2020’ at the University of Edinburgh in July 2025. The doctoral project explored how a ‘decarceration consensus’ which emerged in Scotland around 2008 came to be widely considered as having failed, as well as how attempted transformations to the Scottish Prison Service from 2012 onwards revealed important cracks in this consensus. The project highlighted how Scotland’s contemporary nation-building project constrained and calcified penal imagination, and how even nationalisms broadly considered as ‘progressive’ may obstruct debate, dissent, and obscure more complex realities.

Her current research sits at intersections between the sociology of punishment and the sociology of nations, comparatively exploring how imaginings of nation may shape or constrain penal reform and abolition struggles.

Recent publications:

Hunter, C.L.C., McNeill, F. and Tripkovic, M. (2024) ‘Criminal disenfranchisement: Developments in, and lessons from, Scotland’, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 63(1), pp. 62–81. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12546.

Hunter, C.L.C. (2023) ‘The Welsh Criminal Justice System: On the Jagged Edge: Review’, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 62(2), pp. 286–288. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12526.

Research themes:

Punishment, citizenship, and communities.