Natalie completed an undergraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Glasgow in 2017, focusing her research on areas of social and criminal justice. Most recently, she completed an MA in Criminology at Birkbeck, University of London alongside working full time in the third sector. Here, Natalie’s research focused on abolitionist responses to drug policy reform, policing and incarceration, exploring alternative responses to current carceral practices.

Natalie’s research interests include drug use and stigmatisation, gender, policing and abolition.

Natalie’s PhD ‘Vulnerability and Police Contact: Gendered Pathways to Drug Dependence’ will explore the impact of gender on people’s pathways to drug dependence, experiences of dependence and experiences of policing. The main research method will consist of in-depth, life-history interviews with samples of drug dependent men and women, consisting both of those currently in drug treatment and the disengaged. Interviews will also be carried out with officers and others engaged in frontline policing, to explore the themes coming out of the analysis of the user interviews.