Katharina Swirak is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at University College Cork. She is a graduate of the University of Utrecht (BA) the London School of Economics (MSc) and University College Cork (PhD). Katharina’s research and teaching are informed by different strands of critical social policy, critical criminology and abolitionist schools of thought. Katharina is particularly interested in the intersections of social policy and criminal justice policy, reentry and reintegration, young people and crime and the criminal justice voluntary sector. Katharina has recently co-authored a monograph on the Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Times with Bristol University Press.

Shadd Maruna is Professor of Criminology at Queen’s University Belfast. Previously, he has worked at the University of Cambridge, the University at Albany, the University of Manchester, and Rutgers University where he was the Dean of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice (USA). His research focuses on prisoner release, education and reintegration. His book Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives was named the Outstanding Contribution to Criminology in 2001. He also received the inaugural Research Medal from the Howard League for Penal Reform in 2013 for his research’s impact on prison reform. Along with Gillian McNaull, he runs a Learning Together course on “Reintegration After Prison” at Hydebank Wood College in Belfast. Previously, he has run Learning Together courses at HMP Risley and Greene Correctional Facility in New York.

Maggie O’Neill is a Professor in Sociology at University College Cork and Visiting Professor Northumbria University, Newcastle. Previously, she was Chair in Sociology & Criminology in the Department of Sociology at the University of York, and Professor in Criminology at the University of Durham and Principal of Ustinov College. Her inter-disciplinary research explores feminist participatory action research, sex work, ethnographic and biographical methods, participatory arts and conducting arts based research. In 2023, Maggie was elected to the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), which is the highest academic honour in Ireland. She is also a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Executive Committee of the European Sociological Association, and a member, former Vice Chair and Chair of Research Network 3 ‘Biographical Perspectives on European Societies’, a member of the Sociological Association of Ireland since 2018 and a long term member of the British Sociological Association. She is also a board member of the Global Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Network. Other roles include being a board member of the LEX Research network, an associate editor on the Journal of Gender, Justice and Social Transformation and an editorial board member of the Irish Journal of Sociology, and a board member of Irish Sex Work Research Network.

James Cronin is a lecturer in teaching and learning enhancement at the Centre for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning, University College Cork. James is educated as a journalist, historian, and pedagogue from University College Cork and the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. He is a recipient of the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018 in University College Cork (UCC) and twice recipient of the President's Award for Research on Innovative Forms of Teaching & Learning at UCC: first in 2004 for developing learning resources for the newly-established History of Art in UCC and again in 2018 for a learning community partnership between prison educators and University College Cork. Since 2017, James has been involved in a creative synergy between University College Cork and prison education partnerships by fostering visual thinking strategies as a pedagogy aimed at disrupting power imbalances and by promoting a convivial learning environment in the art studios. James employs visual thinking strategies, to encourage students in Cork Prison to question how to see with intention by encouraging them to look closely at a work of art in order to respond to its affect on them. This technique is orientated towards promotion of freedom of creative expression by students who reflect on their experiences of incarceration as a stage on their journey out of crime. Their work is annually exhibited on Spike Island in Cork harbour.

Gillian is a Lecturer in Criminology at Ulster University. She was previously a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast where she co-facilitates the 'Learning Together' project in Hydebank Wood Secure College. She is interested in participatory methodologies, with her last project, the ESRC funded 'Coping with Covid in Prisons' using a Participatory Action Research framework to co-produce research design and analysis with current and formerly incarcerated people. She is also interested in State harm, having recently completed an Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission funded project with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, 'Death Investigation, Coroners' Inquests and the Rights of the Bereaved' which explored the experience of inquests in Ireland. Her previous Research Fellowship in the School of Law critically examined the institutional reform of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, locating the change programme within the broader context of devolution and the political economy. Gillian's PhD examined the lived experience of women’s custodial remand using a critical feminist perspective which explored the criminalisation of women and the harms of imprisonment. More broadly Gillian's research and activism focuses on prison abolition, ecological and transformative justice and the harms of criminal justice decision-making. In addition, with an extensive background in the third-sector, she is interested in the penal voluntary sector and formerly co-ordinated prison peer support schemes for Samaritans Ireland.

Kathleen White is a Researcher with the University College Cork Department of Sociology and Criminology for the "North South Together" project. Prior to this, she was the Community Development Manager in South Inner City Dublin, where she managed community services, local advocacy, and adult education programmes. Kathleen was a 2018 George J. Mitchell Scholar and completed an MA in Sociology at University College Cork. Her thesis was a comparative critical policy analysis on rehabilitation and reintegration support for those impacted by the justice system in Ireland and New Jersey. Before moving to Ireland, she coordinated community services in New York City and New Jersey, delivered educational programs on Rikers Island Jail Complex, and advocated alongside those impacted by the justice system in the U.S. She obtained her undergraduate degree in History and Peace Studies from Manhattan College, where she was a participant in an Inside Out Prison Exchange course on Rikers Island. She has a strong interest in social justice, prison abolition, community development and activism, and critical social policy and criminology.