Staff Profile

Biography

I am interested in the intersection of healthcare and criminal justice, whether that is embodied in healthcare professionals who work in criminal justice contexts (e.g. police stations and prisons), or scientific and/or medical experts presenting evidence in criminal trials. As a result my research sits at the intersection of the sociology of science and technology, medical sociology and socio-legal studies. I have recently been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship and so will be working on that in academic year 2025-26.

For information about the ESRC project "What is Equivalence in Police Custody Healthcare" please see the following link: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/equivalence-in-custody-healthcare/

Prior to joining Newcastle University I held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2009-2010) and was Principal Investigator on an ESRC Small Grant (2010-2011), both carried out at the University of Edinburgh; following the completion of the small grant I became a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Southampton (2011-2015). More recently I successfully applied to The Leverhulme Trust for a Research Fellowship and before that to the ESRC Standard Grant scheme to fund a project exploring the delivery of healthcare in police custody suites titled "What is 'Equivalence' in Police Custody Healthcare?". Prior to this, I received a Wellcome Trust Seed Award Grant for the project "Police Custody Nursing: Ethical, Social, Policy and Professional Challenges". I hold a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Edinburgh and a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice from the University of Southampton. I have also held Visiting Fellowships at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Department of Sociology, Trent University; and School of Law, National University of Ireland in Galway. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the British Sociological Association, and an Editor for the journal Social Theory and Health.. 

Google scholar: Click here.

Research Interests and Expertise

I am predominantly interested in the ways that medicine is employed in legal decision-making contexts and have followed this interest through multiple research projects: the role of doctors (otherwise known as Forensic Medical Examiners) in the examination of a person reporting a rape or sexual assault; a study of the introduction of nurses into the forensic investigation in sexual assault cases, in particular comparing the novel Forensic Nurse Examiner role in England and Wales with the more established Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner in Ontario, Canada; the role of sleep medicine in sexual assault cases where the accused does not deny the assault but claims to have no recollection of the event, as they were sleepwalking at the time; as well as investigating the delivery of healthcare in police custody suites; and the development of a network of forensic medical professionals working in rural areas of Ontario and Scotland.. My research has been funded by the ESRC, the Wellcome Trust, the Leverhulme Trust and SSHRC. At the heart of all of these studies are questions concerning the boundaries between medicine and the law and the ways that those boundaries are maintained and negotiated; questions about the ways that 'real rape' stereotypes inform (and are in turn supported) by forensic practices; and the ways that disagreements in knowledge claims are resolved.

Latest Projects

Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship - Forensic Medicine: A Sociological Analysis

The project aims to understand the similarities and differences between the medical disciplines collectively labelled forensic medicine, with the objective of developing conceptual tools for understanding forensic medicine holistically. Based on secondary analysis from studies in three areas (sexual assault intervention, sleep medicine and police custody healthcare), as well as conversations with leading social scientific scholars, this study aims to be the first to conceptualise the disparate forms of forensic medicine sociologically, and in so doing provide a new analytical lens for understanding the ways that the institutions of criminal justice and medicine interact to produce this hybrid discipline.

International Networks

I am a co-founder of the Comparative Analysis in Rape Research Network (CAiRRN), an interdisciplinary collection of scholars interested in the treatment of rape victims by criminal justice personnel.

PhD Supervision

Current Supervision

Gemma Molyneux - Ambition, Aspiration, Ability and Enjoyment: Exploring young people's experience of STEM education in school and the factors that shape their subject selection

Oscar Daniel - Where’s the Care in Trans Healthcare?: Rethinking Medical Pedagogy for Trans-Inclusive Practice

Gabriella Mwedzi - Between Faith, Community, and Belonging: The Intersectional Struggles of Black Pentecostal Christian Migrant Women Responding to Intimate Partner Violence in the UK

Kelvin Chu - Police Encounters: Perception and experience from People with Mental Illness 

Sarah Connelly - How does vulnerability act as a mechanism for support and how is this constructed through policy and practice with the police

Matthew Ryding - How can Third-Party Reporting Centres improve the recording of racial and religious hate crime in England and Wales?

Previous Supervision

Angela Plessas - Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: Exploring the social construction of a contentious diagnostic category

Melissa Whitaker - Love Apptually - An analysis of how heterosexual users construct, negotiate and use dating apps

Neil MacEwan - Responsibilisation, Rules and Rule-Following Concerning Cyber-Security: Findings from small business case studies in the UK (University of Southampton)

I would be interested in supervising PhD research in any of the following areas:

• Sociology of the Forensic Sciences
• Science and Technology Studies
• Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
• Medical Sociology (especially Sociology of Diagnosis or Medical Professions)
• Gender-Based Violence (especially investigations into the criminal justice response to rape and sexual assault)

Given my Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, I will not be teaching in 2025-26.

• Articles

  • McMillan L, Corrigan R, Mulla S, Rees G, White D. Compliance and Credibility: A critique of the sexual assault forensic examination from international perspectives. Gender and Justice 2025, 1(1), 119-139.
  • Rasmussen EB, Johannessen LEF, Rees G. Diagnosing by Anticipation: Coordinating patient trajectories within and across social systems. Sociology of Health and Illness 2024, 46(S1), 152-170.
  • Rees G. The coproduction work of healthcare professionals in police custody: destabilising the care-custody paradox. Policing and Society 2023, 33(1), 51-63.
  • Rees G, White D. Judging Post-Controversy Science: Judicial discretion and scientific marginalisation in the courtroom. Science as Culture 2023, 32(1), 109-131.
  • Rees G. Getting the Sergeants on your Side: The importance of interpersonal relationships and cultural interoperability for generating interagency collaboration between nurses and the police in custody suites. Sociology of Health and Illness : a journal of medical sociology 2020, 42(1), 111-125.
  • White D, Rees G. Self-Defence or Undermining the Self?: Exploring the possibilities and limitations of a novel anti-rape technology. Violence Against Women 2014, 20(3), 360-368.
  • Rees G. Whose credibility is it anyway? Professional authority and relevance in forensic medical examinations of sexual assault survivors. Review of European Studies 2012, 4(4), 110-120.
  • Rees G, White D. Vindictive but Vulnerable: Contradictory representations of women as demonstrated in online discourse surrounding an anti-rape technology. Women's Studies International Forum 2012, 35(6), 426-31.
  • Crozier I, Rees G. Making A Space for Medical Expertise: Medical knowledge of sexual assault and the construction of boundaries between forensic medicine and the law in late nineteenth century England. Law, Culture and the Humanities 2012, 8(2), 285-304.
  • Rees G. “With the disruption to your family life, it’s more a vocation than a job”: Favours and Family in the Forensic Nurse Examination of Sexual Assault Survivors. Review of European Studies 2012, 4(5), 109-118.
  • Rees G. 'Morphology is a witness which doesn’t lie': Diagnosis by similarity relation and analogical inference in forensic medicine. Social Science and Medicine 2011, 73(6), 866-872.
  • Rees G. 'It is not for me to say whether consent was given or not': Forensic Medical Examiners’ Justifications for ‘Neutral Reports’ in Rape Cases. Social and Legal Studies 2010, 19(3), 371-386.

• Authored Books

  • Rees G. Forensic Medicine: A sociological analysis. Bristol University Press, 2028. In Preparation.
  • Rees G, Mulrine S, Blell M, Addison M, McKinnon I. Care Detained: A critical analysis of healthcare delivery in police custody suites. Routledge, 2028. In Preparation.

• Book Chapters

  • Rapley T, Rees G. Collecting Documents as Data. In: Flick, U, ed. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection. London; California; New Delhi; Singapore: SAGE Publications, 2018, pp.378-391.
  • Jackson A, Rees G, Wortley N. Sleep Disorders / Sexsomnia: The Role of the Expert and the External/Internal Factor Dichotomy. In: Livings, B; Reed, A; Wake, N, ed. Mental Condition Defences and the Criminal Justice System: Perspectives from Law and Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp.236-274.
  • Rees G. Making the colposcope "forensic": The medico-legal management of a controversial visualisation device. In: Cloatre, E; Pickersgill, M, ed. Knowledge, Technology and Law: At the Intersection of Socio-Legal and Science & Technology Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015, pp.86-103.
  • Rees G. Contentious Roommates? Spatial constructions of the therapeutic evidential spectrum in medico-legal work. In: Harper, I; Kelly, T; Khanna, A, ed. The Clinic and the Court: Medicine, Law and Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp.141-162.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)

  • McKinnon I, Rees G. What Is "Equivalence" of Healthcare in Police Custody? An Evaluation of Police Custody Healthcare in the United Kingdom. In: XXXVIIIth International Congress on Law and Mental Health. 2024, Barcelona, Spain: International Academy of Law and Mental Health.

• Scholarly Edition

  • Rees G. Strong Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. In: Atkinson P, Delamont S, Williams R, Cernat A, Sakshaug JW ed. Sage Research Methods Foundations 2019. London: SAGE, 11.