Professor of Criminal Law and Philosophy, Faculty of Law; Deputy Director of the Centre for Penal Theory and Penal Ethics, Institute for Criminology

Trained in Germany (First and Second State Examinations in Law, “Gut” (Hamburg); Dr. iur. “summa cum laude” (Humboldt University Berlin)) and in the U.K. (Magister Juris, University of Oxford, 1st class), she has been based at the University of Cambridge since 2001. One strand of her work addresses the philosophical foundations of state punishment and their significance for the application of law, and law reform. Here, recent collaborative work includes edited volumes on Criminal Law and the Authority of the State (2017), on Penal Censure: Engagements Within and Beyond Desert Theory (2019) and on Re-reading Beccaria: On the Contemporary Significance of a Penal Classic (2022). Another major strand of her work is in criminal law theory and doctrine, often with a comparative or transnational dimension. Here, she has recently written on participation in crime and on criminal-law causation, and is currently exploring outcome responsibility, as well as conceptions and functions of recklessness and negligence. She also publishes on transitional justice where her 2007 research monograph on Transitional Amnesty in South Africa is considered a classic in the field.