My body is a cage: an investigation into the bodily identities of incarcerated women

Anastasia is a second year PhD student at the School of Law researching the physical effects of imprisonment for women offenders. Her thesis is titled: “My body is a cage’: An investigation into the corporeal experience of imprisonment in England.” She completed her undergraduate studies in History and Sociology at Warwick University and obtained an M.Phil degree in Criminology from Cambridge University. Anastasia’s work is supervised by Professors Elaine Player and Maleiha Malik. Anastasia’s research interests are interdisciplinary and lie broadly within the areas of Sociology, History, Criminology and Law. She is interested in theoretical ideas on crime causation and in emerging debates in penology. She takes a particular interest in prison studies and sentencing. She is also interested in aspects of gender and crime and particularly analyses within feminist criminology and feminist approaches to the bodily identities. She has also developed a strong interest in social and legal theory and mostly in theoretical thought within the Sociology of Law, the Sociology of Health and Illness and the Sociology of the Body. Her PhD thesis investigates women’s imprisonment and the representations and social uses of the female body in prisons in England. The thesis includes a theoretical, historical and empirical component. She is evaluating the varying effects of prison regimes on women’s presentation and view of themselves and discusses the role of the female body in aiding the production of a ‘prisoner identity’ and reflecting the pains and experience of imprisonment