Miss Jessica Cleary

Jessica Cleary is a social researcher whose work spans criminology, social work and social care, with a particular interest in the relationship between policy, evidence and practice. Her research focuses on why ambitious policy reforms can struggle to produce meaningful change within complex public service systems, and the organisational and institutional conditions that shape how change is interpreted and enacted. Across her research and applied work, she is particularly interested in the space between identifying what needs to change and understanding how that change can be achieved and sustained in practice, including how implementation frameworks and service redesign approaches can support the translation of policy and evidence into practice.

Jessica recently submitted her ESRC-funded part-time PhD within the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Her doctoral research, Between Policy & Practice: Community Justice for Women in Scotland, examines why persistent problems in community justice for women remain despite sustained policy attention and repeated reform. Drawing on 30 qualitative interviews with policy officials, service commissioners, strategic leads and frontline practitioners, the research examines how national ambitions for gender-responsive community justice are interpreted and enacted across policy, organisational and frontline contexts. It considers how governance, organisational priorities, institutional arrangements and everyday practice interact to enable, constrain or reshape attempts at reform.

Alongside her doctoral research, Jessica has worked across a range of qualitative research and evaluation projects in criminology, social work and social care. This has included work with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, the Independent Care Review, IMPACT’s Evidence and Evaluation team, and a research fellowship evaluating a local authority’s approach to involving people with lived experience in strategic decision-making. In 2022, she received funding through the Mitacs Globalink UK Research and Innovation scheme to undertake a research fellowship at Université Laval, Canada, comparatively examining how gender was understood and addressed within criminal justice approaches in Scotland and Quebec.

Jessica has also previously worked as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Law School, teaching across LLM and MSc criminology and criminal justice programmes. She gained her Advanced HE Fellowship in 2026.

Her research interests are closely connected to her experience in strategic change and implementation roles supporting frontline services. She previously worked as an Implementation Lead within a third sector organisation supporting the translation of the Independent Care Review’s recommendations into organisational and practice change children and family social work teams. Currently Jessica works as a Strategic Improvement Coach with IMPACT on a national programme delivered in collaboration with Social Work Scotland supporting the learning phase of implementing a relationship-based practice model across Scottish adult social care services. This work draws on implementation methodologies and change approaches to support local learning, understand the conditions shaping implementation, and inform the wider development of the national implementation programme.

Jessica’s research interests include:

The Sociology of Punishment and Criminalisation – institutional cultures, policies, practice and lived experiences

Prison Abolitionism and Social Justice

Women and Criminal Justice

Rehabilitation, Resettlement, (Re)integration and Desistance from crime

Qualitative methodologies

Within the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling Jessica supports the teaching and learning on several undergraduate modules including:

Gender, Crime and Justice; Crime and Criminal Justice; Crimes of the Powerful;
The Development of Social Theory; Social Research Methods 1 (qualitative) Punishment and Society; Understanding Social Policy; and Social Differentiation;

Between 2024-25 Jessica held a Teaching Fellow position in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Edinburgh Law School. In this post she was the course organiser for core and optional MSc courses including:

Criminal Justice and Penal Processes Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice

She has successfully supervised 5 MSc and 2 LLB dissertation students and previously held an academic year lead role for a 4th year Law Undergraduate cohort.