Professor Jo Phoenix
professor of Criminology, and deputy head of the School of Law, University of Reading; co-author, SEX: One Woman’s War

Jo Phoenix is a sociologist turned criminologist. She has worked in universities of almost every description – from Middlesex University in the late 1990s, to the Universities of Bath, Durham, Leicester, the Open University and now University of Reading. During her careers, she has written extensively about prostitution, prostitution-policy reform, child sexual exploitation, risk and need analysis in youth justice, the implementation of policy reform in youth justice and even young people’s political participation in the uprisings referred to as ‘the Arab Spring’. Her academic expertise is in the areas of youth justice, sex, gender and justice, qualitative research methodology, discourse analysis and academic freedom, politics, ethics and research.

In 2018, Jo entered ‘the gender wars’ and found herself cancelled by the University of Essex, then harassed and discriminated against by both her departmental colleagues and then further harassed and constructively dismissed by senior management at the Open University. She took them to an Employment Tribunal and, in January 2024, she won her case. Jo is currently writing a socio-autobiography of her experiences of being a lesbian, a feminist, an academic, cancelled and a successful claimant.

She is co-author, with Pat Carlen, of SEX: One Woman’s War, published in July 2026.

RELATED SESSIONS

Sunday 18 October, 10:00 Church House Café
Meet the author/publisher: Jo Phoenix on ‘publishing for those who refuse to be cancelled’