Professor Oona Brooks-Hay is Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.
She has conducted an extensive range of research on gender based violence over a 20-year period. Her research interests include criminal justice responses to sexual and domestic offences, victim-survivor experiences and conceptualisations of ‘justice’, alternative forms of justice, gendered inequalities, feminism and the creative representation of experiences within research.
Oona is the founder of the University of Glasgow GBV Research Forum and a member of the Scottish Government’s Victims Taskforce.
Selected publications
Brooks-Hay, O., Hillyard, S. and Johnson, K. (2026) Walking a tightrope? The implications of working in partnership with the police for Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs). European Journal of Criminology. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14773708251400459
Brooks-Hay, O., Burman, B. and Cullen, A. (2026) ‘Telling their story: Victim-survivor voice and participation in rape trials’ in Leahy, S., Dowds, E. and Weare, S (eds.) Researching Rape Trials: Methods, Ethics and Empirical Perspectives. Routledge.
Brooks, O. (2026) ‘Is the tide turning? A reflection on developments in rape prevention campaigns’, in N. Lombard (Ed.) Routledge Handbook of Gender and Violence.
Smith, O., Johnson, K., Brooks-Hay, O., Friskney, R., Geoghegan-Fittall, S., Hillyard, S., Hohl, K., Jennings, B., Molisso, S., Myhill, A. and Walling-Wefelmeyer, R. (2025) The systemic procedural injustice faced by victim-survivors in police responses to rape and ‘serious’ sexual offences: A comprehensive study of four forces in England and Wales. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 82. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756061625000321?via%3Dihub
Johnson, K., Walling-Wefelmeyer, R., Smith, O., Hohl, K. and Brooks-Hay, O. (2025) Re-imagining procedural justice in policing sexual violence: Centring the voices, rights, interests and experiences of survivors. British Journal of Criminology, 65(3): 639–657. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/65/3/639/7745465
Burman, M., Brooks-Hay, O. and Friskney, R. (2023) ‘Operationalizing Coercive Control: Early Insights on the Policing of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018’ in H. Douglas, K. Fitz-Gibbon, L. Goodmark and S. Walklate (eds.), The Criminalization of Violence Against Women: Comparative Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/55110/chapter-abstract/423922456?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Brooks-Hay, O., Saunders, K. and Burman, M. (2022) A toxic mix: the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on the post-separation experiences of domestic abuse survivors. Journal of Gender Based Violence, 6(3): 426–441. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/jgbv/6/3/article-p426.xml
Brooks-Hay, O. (2020) Doing the “right thing”? Understanding why rape victim-survivors report to the police. Feminist Criminology, 15(2), pp. 174-195. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1557085119859079
Burman, M. and Brooks-Hay, O. (2020) Feminist framings of victim advocacy in criminal justice contexts. In: Tapley, J. and Davies, P. (eds.) Victimology: Research, Policy and Activism. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, pp. 135-157. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-42288-2_6
Policing and Security
Law, Policy and Practice
Knowledge Exchange and Engagement
Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice
Violence, Drugs and Alcohol
