Dr Elizabeth Shaw

Biography

Elizabeth Shaw received her LLM by research (on the topic of the criminal responsibility of psychopaths) and LLB from the University of Aberdeen. She undertook her PhD at the University of Edinburgh on the implications of free will scepticism for the criminal justice system, supported by scholarships from the AHRC and the Clark Foundation for Legal Education. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, involving criminal law, philosophy and neuroscience. She is a co-editor of Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment (Routledge, 2021). She is the author of Punishment and Moral Uncertainty: Seeking Convergence on Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press 2026), which was based on research that was supported by a Royal Society of Edinburgh personal research fellowship. She is currently working on her book The Ethics of Crime-Preventing Neurointerventions, which is based on research funded by The Society of Applied Philosophy. She is a co-director of the Justice Without Retribution Network: http://www.justicewithoutretribution.com/home.html

Research Overview

• moral enhancement
• criminal responsibility
• free will
• theories of punishment
• criminal law
• moral uncertainty

Teaching Responsibilities

Elizabeth teaches on: 

Critical Legal Thinking and Scholarship (a co-ordinator)

Criminology Honours

Philosophy of Criminal Law

Her previous teaching included:

Criminal Law Honours (co-ordinator)

Criminal Law LLM (co-ordinator)

Issues in Criminal Justice (co-ordinator)

Criminological Theories LLM (co-ordinator)

English Criminal Law Ordinary (co-ordinator)