Becka Hudson is a Mildred Blaxter Fellow at ICPR, funded by the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness. Her work looks at the interaction between psychiatry and imprisonment from a critical perspective. She is currently researching the use of colonial psychiatry in the suppression of uprisings in the British Empire. Becka brings ethnography and archival work together to situate social practices in political-economic and global context.
She was formerly a postdoctoral researcher at Birkbeck’s School of Historical Studies on the CBT in Britain: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives project, led by Dr Sarah Marks, where she led on a stream of work looking at how cognitive behavioural therapies (CBT) were used in ‘identity change courses’ in prisons and probation. She has also recently completed a Visiting Fellowship at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies.
Becka's PhD, completed at Birkbeck Criminology, investigated the diagnosis and management of ‘personality disordered offenders'. Becka is a former Associate Editor of Law and Critique, former Associate Lecturer in Criminology and a founding member of Birkbeck’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health. Prior to working at Birkbeck, Becka worked with grassroots campaigning organisations on issues of housing, cultural expression, imprisonment and policing. She continues to be involved in campaigning.