Dr HELEN ELFLEET

Dr Helen Elfleet is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology. She has been a member of staff at Edge Hill University since 2014, when she joined the university as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and PhD Candidate. Prior to this she completed a BA Honours in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Central Lancashire in 2011, and a Master’s by Research in 2014. In 2019 she completed a PhD in criminology at EHU. She also completed a PG Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, awarded by EHU in 2016.

Helen is a member of the HiGGS department. She holds the role of Assessment Lead for Criminology. She is also a member of the Athena Swan Working Group, led by Professor Christopher Greenough. In 2024/25 she assisted Programme Leaders and Subject Leads with the revalidation of criminology programmes, by leading the student consultation for this process.

Formerly she has held the departmental roles of Work Experience and Sandwich Year Tutor for Criminology. She has also been a member of departmental Employability and Careers Steering Group, and a Careers and Employability Teams (including Alumni Associations) group. She was the module leader for CRI2026: Work Experience, and therefore has substantial experience of enhancing student employability through engagement with external stakeholders. Additionally, she was instrumental in setting up an Employer Advisor Panel for criminology in her former department with Dr Helen Baker. 

Her research and teaching interests include imprisonment and post-release experience, prison education, the penal voluntary sector, gender-specific governance, neoliberalism, austerity, mental health, zemiology, and governmentality. She has authored book chapters, and articles for academic journals. She has presented papers at numerous national and international conferences. Her recent research has focused on the role and function of a post-Corston Report (2007) women’s centre for formerly imprisoned women with mental health problems. Recently, in 2025 with colleagues, she published an article in the Journal of Adult and Continuing Education on the role of critical andragogical approaches to teaching and learning in prisons. She is currently researching the unnatural and near-unnatural death of women after prison in England and Wales.

Helen is a member of The Centre for Social Responsibility (CSR) and The European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control.

Gender responsive governance; neoliberalism; governmentality; mental health problems; post release experience; and imprisonment. 

Helen currently teaches on the following modules at undergraduate level:

CRI2024 Crime, Media, and Criminology (Module Leader)

CRI2234 Community Punishments (Module Leader)

CRI3121 Corporate Crime (Module Leader)

CRI3110 The Politics of Imprisonment

SPY3140 Dissertation

In 2026/27 she is due to teach on the following modules:

CRI2024 Crime, Media, and Criminology (Module Leader)

CRI2234 Community Punishments (Module Leader)

CRI2224 Violence and Society (Module Leader)

CRI3121 Corporate Crime 

CRI3110 The Politics of Imprisonment

SPY3140 Dissertation

Helen supervises Master's and PhD students in her areas of expertise.