In the early 1990s I had the privilege of studying with David Garland, then teaching and researching in Edinburgh University’s Law School. He had recently published a wonderful book – Punishment and Modern Society: a study in social theory – which remains as relevant and important today as it was then. Week by week, Professor […]
by Lorraine M. Paterson In 1923 in the British colony of Trinidad, a young English woman returned from visiting her family in a suburb of the capital, Port of Spain, to find that her Chinese husband of six years, Lý Liễu, had packed up his possessions and left her and their two small children. […]
When my other half pointed out that there was a computer game where you could run your own prison, he probably didn’t think I would actually play it. After all, I spend enough of my free time (and his!) thinking and talking about convicts. Nevertheless, it struck me that a computer game might be a […]
Some may argue (for good reason) that the collapse of space and time is a commonplace condition of twenty-first century life. From where I sit, however, I wonder: do many experiences symbolize the post-modern blurring of geographies and temporalities as deftly as air travel? I contemplate this admittedly non-unique yet nevertheless miraculous phenomenon—the inhabitation of […]
How can we frame convict labour in the broader context of entangled labour relations? This is one of the key-questions in the Carceral Archipelago project, which seeks to understand how (especially transported) convicts interacted with other workers within and across empires. Some important suggestions for addressing this question emerged during the first European Labour History […]
In the Musée Départemental Alexandre Franconie in Cayenne there is a room dedicated to the history of the French colonial bagne (prison). Among the displays of artwork copied from the paintings of the well-known convict artist Francis Lagrange are a handful of objects made by convict craftsmen. One is by Lagrange himself, a small and […]
by Grace Huxford Lecturer in Nineteenth/Twentieth Century History, University of Bristol At the Carceral Archipelago conference held in September at the University of Leicester, I delivered a paper on British prisoners of war during the Korean, on a panel regarding ‘Political Prisoners’. Chaired by Professor Mary Gibson (CUNY), with Aaron Moore (Leicester) and Natasha Pairaudeau […]
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this post contains images of people who have died. At the Carceral Archipelago’s conference last month we discussed how landscapes around penal institutions could be rendered “empty” in our histories. This conception emerges from archival records in which land and sea are portrayed as “natural […]
By Kellie Moss. During the last two years as an affiliated researcher with the Carceral Archipelago Project my work has taken some fascinating turns as the parameters I selected to define my research have unexpectedly expanded. Initially interested in the role of convicts transported to the Swan River Colony in Western Australia my efforts in […]
By Jennie Jeppesen. At the beginning of her discursive remarks, Ebony Jones summed up best one of the most refreshing things about the Carceral Archipelago conference which took place between the 13th and 16th of September in Leicester. She said (and I paraphrase slightly here) “It is refreshing to be in a place and with […]
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