The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) is delighted to announce the appointment of a new Director, Professor Lesley McAra CBE FRSE. She will be the eighth director of IASH since 1969, following in the footsteps of figures such as William Beattie CBE and Susan Manning, and takes over from Professor Steve Yearley in August 2022.
I am absolutely delighted to be the incoming Director of IASH. Since its foundation, over half a century ago, IASH has been a beacon of academic excellence, with a deserved global reputation for ground-breaking and multi-disciplinary research.
I have always held to a vision of the University as a transformative civic institution, which promulgates the values of social justice and inclusion. Through its institutional projects, IASH has been tackling some of the most critical issues facing contemporary societies as they relate to decoloniality and gender justice.
I am particularly proud to have been appointed to lead an Institute which has nurtured the research and creativity of generations of early-career as well as more established scholars. Through my longstanding membership of the IASH Management Group, I have seen at first hand the inspirational intellectual space it opens up for exploration and experimentation. And, notwithstanding the strictures of successive lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, IASH Fellows have maintained a research portfolio of breadth and significance.
The Institute’s vibrant community is testimony to the brilliant leadership of its previous Directors. And on behalf of the University and the wider IASH community, I want to congratulate and warmly thank Professor Steve Yearley for his outstanding stewardship over the past five years – his will be big shoes to fill!
I am now looking forward to welcoming our new cohort of postdoctoral scholars, and to working with the core IASH team, when I take up my role later in the summer.
Lesley McAra is Professor of Penology in the Law School at the University of Edinburgh, and Assistant Principal Community Relations (academic lead for the University’s civic responsibility strategy). She has just completed her term as the inaugural Director of the Edinburgh Futures Institute (driving a challenge-led trans-disciplinary programme of research, education and engagement on the applications of data driven innovation for social benefit). Lesley’s main research interests lie in the general areas of the sociology of punishment and the sociology of law and deviance, with a particular focus on juvenile justice and the aetiology of youth crime. For the past 24 years she has been Co-Director (formerly with David J. Smith and now with Susan McVie) of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a longitudinal programme of research on pathways into and out of crime for a cohort of 4,300 young people. In 2013, Lesley was recipient (with Susan) of the Howard League Research Medal which celebrates high quality research from ‘new thinking’ and ‘radical researchers’ who have changed penal policy and practice; this was followed in 2016 with the award of the Chancellor’s medal for research impact, and in 2019 with the ESRC prize for outstanding public policy impact. A former President of the European Society of Criminology, Lesley was awarded a CBE for services to Criminology in the 2018 New Year’s honours list and in 2021 she was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.