Esther van Ginneken is Associate Professor at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden University.

More information about Esther van Ginneken

Esther van Ginneken is Associate Professor at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden University. Before joining the Faculty at Leiden University, Esther worked at Liverpool Hope University. She received her PhD (2014) from the University of Cambridge for her thesis entitled “The pains and gains of imprisonment”, which was awarded with the Salje Medal and Nigel Walker Prize.

Research

Esther’s main research focus is imprisonment, including prison conditions, violence in prisons, and wellbeing of incarcerated individuals. She has also carried out research on positive experiences of imprisonment and posttraumatic growth of incarcerated individuals. Another interest is cell sharing and its consequences.

In 2022, Esther was awarded a five-year research grant (Vidi) from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for a research project on violence in prisons, to investigate why violent incidents occur in prisons and how staff respond. As part of this project, Dante Hoek carries out her PhD research on the circumstances that contribute to prison violence, using virtual reality as an instrument.

Esther also supervises research on normalization in prison, by PhD student Jill van de Rijt.

Esther is principal investigator of a research project (2023-2024) on sexual abuse and safety in women’s prisons in the Netherlands, commissioned by the Dutch Prison Service.

Teaching

Esther teaches the course Risk Assessment (MSc Forensic Criminology), and supervises students who are writing their master’s thesis.