Dr Diana Batchelor (she/her)

Diana has worked in criminal justice and conflict resolution in the UK, South Africa, and Lebanon, in roles ranging from frontline support work to evaluation, research and policy development. Her practical experience inspires her to design academic research with real-world impact.

During her ESRC-funded PhD, Diana conducted both qualitative and quantitative empirical studies on victim-survivor experiences of restorative justice processes. She collaborated with service delivery organisations to produce guidance for practitioners, service-users, and the public, as well as peer-reviewed journal articles.

The current research project began because people who have been victimised often ask “why?”: why the crime happened or why they were targeted. Yet we know little about people’s own answers to such questions, and about how these thought processes affect (or are affected by) their views of justice and their recovery. Diana is working alongside partners in both the UK and Indonesia to find out. This international, collaborative approach will provide insight into how beliefs about the causes of victimisation relate to victim-survivor experiences in two different legal and cultural contexts. The project will enhance our broad understanding of human reasoning and views of moral responsibility, while also contributing lessons for the development of resilience and the implementation of justice.

Beyond her current project, Diana’s research interests also include: formal and informal relationships between victim-survivors and offenders; the experiences of people who have been both victims and offenders; disputed conceptions of victimhood and victim-blaming; perceptions and meanings of ‘justice’; the effects of the criminal justice system on those involved in it; and methodological questions at the intersection of psychology, sociology and law, including the implications of the so-called ‘replication crisis’ for criminology and victimology.