Dr Andrew Jefferson

Andrew most often refers to himself as a prison ethnographer with a peculiar interest in the relationship between confinement and subjectivity. For the past two decades he has been researching prisons and prison reform processes in the global south with a focus on West Africa (Nigeria & Sierra Leone) and Southeast Asia (Philippines & Myanmar) casting a critical eye at dominant and often hegemonic forms of penal intervention. He has paid particular attention to prison staff and to human rights reforms and had his attention directed to extra-custodial experiences of confinement, hierarchies of victimhood and suffering as a quality of life itself.

Recent publications

Embracing Lessons from Ethnography in Non-Western Prison https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/doing-human-service-ethnography

Confinement Beyond Site: Connecting Urban and Prison Ethnographies With Julienne Weegels and Tomas Max Martin https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/cja/38/1/cja.38.issue-1.xml

Concealment and revelation as bureaucratic and ethnographic practice: Lessons from Tunisian prisons With Bethany Schmidt https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0308275X19842922