Ian Marder

My goal is to support humane, evidence-based criminal justice reform and innovation. This involves a range of activities, including conducting original empirical research, disseminating existing research, policy development, workshop facilitation, network building, and training and education.

Most of my time is spent collaborating with researchers, government ministries, public services, and the third sector to develop restorative justice and restorative practices in the criminal justice system, higher education and other sectors. I coordinate Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change, a five-year project (2019-24) which seeks to implement Council of Europe Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)8 concerning restorative justice in criminal matters in ten European countries. I also conduct research and publish on sentencing guidelines, focusing mostly on their design and impact on judicial decision-making. I have a wider interest in discretion and decision-making, inspection and institutional cultures across the criminal justice process, and have conducted research with the police, courts and probation and prison services.

Beyond criminal justice, I have previously conducted research in the areas of social enterprise and social finance, the role of universities in society, conflict resolution, disarmament and peacebuilding.

I coordinate four modules across the BA, BCL, LLB and MA programmes: LW269 Policing, LW380 Victimology, LW454 Introduction to Criminology and LW687 Restorative Justice. Since 2019, I have been Chair of the MA in Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice. I also supervise students on the modules LW458 Research Project, LW653 Placement and LW690 Dissertation. With Dr. Treasa Kenny, I co-supervise a Ph.D. student, Catherine O'Connell, whose doctoral research explores the use of restorative approaches in organisational change. 

I have a keen interest in the teaching of restorative justice and the use of restorative practices in teaching and learning. In 2020, I established the Restorative Justice Pedagogy network, involving 100 academics from 40 countries. In 2019/20, I won a Team Teaching and Learning Fellowship for a project that used restorative practices to involve students in reviewing and redesigning a final-year module. In 2020/21, I was nominated for the Maynooth Teaching Award, for the year second running, for my work using restorative practices to build community within the MA programme. In 2021, I obtained funding from the Estonian Ministry of Justice to support the University of Tartu to integrate restorative justice into its law curriculum.

I am open to requests for guest and community teaching. I have delivered guest lectures at twenty universities in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Albania, Ireland, New Zealand, Argentina, the US and the UK. I have also taught restorative justice to police, prison and probation officers, judges, lawyers and social workers in England, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Estonia. In 2020, I organised and delivered a short course on victimology for victim advocates.

On Maynooth's criminology and law programmes, I have contributed to PO224 Researching Criminology, LW631 Criminology and Criminal Justice, LW696 Research Methods in Criminology, LW398 Punishment, Penal Policies and Prisons, LW691 Professional Development, LW164 Introduction to Criminological Theory, LW165 Introduction to Criminal Justice and LW156 Introduction to Law II. I have also taught on Maynooth's BA in Community Studies, Certificate in Restorative Practice and Mediation, Diploma in Addiction Studies, Diploma in Mediation, Negotiation and Conflict, Master's in Social Work, and Communiversity programme. 

At the University of Leeds (2013-2018), I taught a range of subjects, including penology, research methods, youth justice, victimology, transnational crime and justice, foundations of social science, and introductory crime and justice courses.