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Project start and end dates

2014 --

Research team members

Dr Mark Brown

Background and aims of the project

This wide ranging programme of research aims to understand punishment practices and the wider penal domain of postcolonial societies. It grows out of my work on colonial law and justice in South Asia (, Routledge, 2014).

The project examines the challenges faced by societies that achieved independence from colonisers but have struggled to escape their colonial heritage. This is particularly acute in the domain of punishment and control, as reflected in the continuing prominence of colonial laws, institutions and infrastructure (eg, prison facilities) in many parts of the global south. My work on the persistence, or stickiness, of colonial logics in postcolonial India was awarded Theoretical Criminology's best article prize in 2017 ().

I am currently working with colleagues from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi) on colonial-postcolonial continuities of control experienced by nomadic hunting communities at the periphery of contemporary Indian society. The research has also included work in Ghana funded by the World Universities Network.

Project publications to date

• Brown, M., Jadhav, V., Raghavan, V. and Sinha, M. (forthcoming 2021) ‘Southern Penal Spaces: A Study of Hunting Nomads in Postcolonial India’. Punishment and Society: Special Issue: Legacies of Empire.
• Brown, M. (2021) ‘Truth and method in Southern Criminology’, Critical Criminology: Special Issue: Thinking and Doing Southern Criminology.
• Brown, M. (2018) ‘Southern criminology in the postcolony: More than a “derivative discourse”?’. In K. Carrington, R. Hogg, J. Scott and M. Sozzo (Eds.) . New York: Palgrave
• Brown, M. (2017) ‘The birth of criminology in South Asia: c1765—1947’. In S.M. Shahidullah (Ed.) . New York: Palgrave.
• Brown, M. (2017) ‘’, Theoretical Criminology, 21: 186-208. 
• Brown, M. (2014) . London & NY: Routledge.