Else Marie Knudsen

Academia is a second career for me. I was a social worker in Toronto for many years, first as a child welfare worker at CAS Toronto, and later as a policy analyst at the John Howard Society of Ontario. 

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I started my doctoral work in the Social Policy Department at the LSE in 2010, exploring the experiences and impact of parental incarceration in Canada. For my research, I spent two years driving around southern Ontario interviewing children who have a parent in prison, their caregivers on 'the outside', and a range of advocates, policy folks and service providers. I learned a lot from all of my participants about the prison system, and a lot about conducting research with people whose lives are full of challenges, fear, stigma, and precarity. And I ate a lot of terrible service station breakfast sandwiches. 

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Today, I'm focusing on publishing my findings and getting a broader research agenda off the ground. I sit on a variety of committees with great researchers, service providers, service users, and other experts, in an attempt to advocate for better, more just, and more research-informed approaches to criminal justice policy. These include: The Global Prisoners' Families Research Group,  the Canadian Criminal Justice Association's Policy Review Committee, the Landon Pearson Centre's Child Rights Academic Network, the new Canadian Coalition for Children of Prisoners, and Toronto's exciting new Reach Out Response Network. 

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Here's me, with my colleague Dr Spendik, discussing punishment and prisons during the pandemic:​

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