This is a funded Masters by Research, including a generous stipend and tuition fees, with well-resourced circumstances for a successful scholarship.
Here is an exciting opportunity to conduct an action research project which will conduct a process evaluation of a new community model of rehabilitation and contribute to its development.
The selected candidate will apply their social science skills and ambition and their probation knowledge to ensure that those who have offended and who live in a specific geographical area have access to the ‘right’ interventions, effective ways of working and the opportunity and advocacy and brokerage support to build social capital to maximise the likelihood of successful, sustained rehabilitation so improving both their life chances and those of their families and thereby improving the communities in which they live. This action research, will allow the student to develop transferable knowledge and skills in this most exciting and active field of criminology and community research.
This Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) project will be held in the Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Life Sciences and Education at the University of South Wales. KESS is a programme funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) awarded by the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO) in the Welsh Government. The Masters by Research will be associated with Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and other strategic partners. The project will focus on reducing offending so improving the pro-social life chances for those who have offended and their families and, with support from partner agencies, increasing community safety and building community cohesion in a disadvantaged community in East Wales.
The project is backed by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) which supervises and rehabilitates convicted people who are sentenced to either imprisonment or supervision in the community.
Programme of research:
This is an action research project which aims to support the partner agency to develop and improve community based interventions and ways of working with offenders and their families which enrich both individual lives and community cohesion. The project will also focus on the way in which partnership development enhances the work. The core aims are to:
1. Initiate/create an evidence led approach into the design and implementation of the community based model of working with offenders by
a) Summarising relevant pre-existing evidence
b) Collecting data relevant to the development of new interventions/ways of working
2. Monitor the development and implementation of the project as it progresses and to feed back findings to the HMPPS team and management committee so as to facilitate improvement. Here there will be particular attention paid to the extent to which partnership working is facilitating the work and how this might be improved. This will be achieved by
a) Analysis of base-line data concerning pre-project information: ways of working; support being offered within the community; and partnership working. Most of this has already been collated by HMPPS and will be made available to the student to use and analyse.
b) Analysis of base-line data concerning pre-project information about the men who have offended, their family members and the community so as to permit an understanding of how they experience the probation service. The data has already been collated by HMPPS and can also be used and analysed by the student.
c) Collection of data 6 months into the project (3 months into the MRes) to understand how things have changed and what might be necessary to improve the project.
3. Comparison of and b against c to suggest improvements to implementation.
The position is available from April 2022
Eligibility of Student:
To be eligible to hold a KESS studentship, you must:
- have a home address in East Wales area (details below)* at the time of registration.
- have the right to take up paid work in the East Wales area* on completion of the scholarship.
- be classified by the University as ‘home’ or ‘EU’ for tuition fees purposes according to the University’s guidelines.
- satisfy University of South Wales’s admissions criteria: see below, qualifications and experience and application process
*East Wales area covers: Vale of Glamorgan / Cardiff/ Newport/ Monmouthshire/ Powys/ Wrexham/ Flintshire
Qualifications and experience:
Eligible applicants will:
- Have a degree (2i or higher) in an appropriate social science discipline.
- Possess a reasonable understanding of the criminal justice system and of probation.
- Be highly self-motivated, with capacity to learn and develop a range of research techniques, with particular focus on qualitative research skills.
- Have well-developed and positively collaborative interpersonal skills allowing the candidate to work effectively with and be accepted by a diverse group of people ranging from vulnerable client groups to senior management personnel in a range of different agencies and organisations.
- Have an ability to deliver technical reports and communicate findings to academic, policy/practice and community audiences.
- Be willing to work intensively in a close knit disadvantaged community.
Application Process:
To download an information pack, please visit: specific funded studentships:
For any queries on eligibility, please contact: KESS Team at Research and Innovation Services, University of South Wales: [Email Address Removed] Tel: 01443 482578
For informal enquiries or further programme information, please contact: Professor Kate Williams at [Email Address Removed] or phone on 01443 654195.
Closing date for applications: midnight Sunday 13th February 2022
Continue with Facebook
