07/08/2026
Researcher Spotlight: Dr Lynsey Black
This week, we’re shining a spotlight on Dr Lynsey Black, Associate Professor in the School of Law and Criminology Maynooth University and a researcher with the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI).
Lynsey’s research spans criminology, gender and punishment, historical and postcolonial criminal justice, the death penalty, and borders. Much of her work explores how histories of punishment, security and social control continue to shape contemporary society.
She is currently Principal Investigator of CONSPACE: Contested Space – Penal Nationalism and the Northern Ireland Border, a Research Ireland-funded project examining crime, punishment and security at the Ireland/Northern Ireland border across a 100-year period.
Most recently, Lynsey published Bordering a Contested State: Northern Ireland as the U.K.’s ‘Other’ Border in Oxford Intersections: Borders. Drawing on research from CONSPACE, the article considers the Northern Ireland border across two distinct periods – examining the historical response to security and movement during the Troubles alongside contemporary political debates around immigration and border control.
Through the concept of penal nationalism, the research explores how borders and security can become closely connected with questions of nationhood, sovereignty and political identity.
Lynsey’s wider research has also examined gender and punishment in Ireland, including women convicted of murder, the death penalty and histories of institutional confinement.
Through CONSPACE and her wider body of work, Lynsey brings historical perspectives into conversation with some of today’s most pressing questions around borders, security, migration and criminal justice.
Learn more about Lynsey and her research: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/faculty-social-sciences/our-people/lynsey-black
