Molly is a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Risk Outside The Home (ROTH) child protection pathway project. She has been working for the Contextual Safeguarding Research Programme (now the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding) since July 2020. Her interests and expertise lie in social-policy analysis, the role of surveillance and control in social-work responses to extra-familial harm, carcerality and securitisation, and human rights in policy and practice. She is particularly interested in how safeguarding policy and practice operates in perpetrating systemic and structural harm, and the ethics of social-work responses to adolescents.
Alongside being a member of the GCCS team, since October 2022 Molly has been enrolled in an ESRC-funded PhD in Sociology and Social Policy, exploring whether the values of social work align with the values underpinning current policies around preventing the radicalisation of young people. Her PhD research is system-harm focused, exploring the intersection between safeguarding and counterterrorism and the implications on the social work as a human rights profession.
Prior to joining the Contextual Safeguarding team, Molly worked for The Children’s Society, following completion of her MA in Human Rights at University College London. At UCL her research focused on the sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children in post-conflict zones perpetrated by UN peacekeepers.