Dr. Nicola Ballantyne
BSc (Hons), MSc, MA, PhD, FHEA
Senior Lecturer, Level Tutor in Criminology
Location:
Priestman Building
Phone: 0191 515 3707 / 3192 / 2395
Email:
nicola.ballantyne@sunderland.ac.uk
Biography
Nicola Ballantyne is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and level tutor for first-year single-honours Criminology students. One of her contributions to the Criminology Programme is writing the module Re-thinking Gender and Violence. She leads and teaches this to second-year students. Continuing in this area, Nicola supervises third-year Criminology dissertation students researching sexual and domestic violence. Nicola is co-supervisor to one PhD student in the faculty, Gillian Denny, who is researching Racist Perpetrators in the North East of England.
Teaching Areas
Nicola's teaching centres primarily around undergraduate first-year social science students on introductory modules in criminology and criminal justice. She also teaches second-year students criminology theory, philosophies of punishment and related contemporary issues in the Criminal Justice System, such as the supervision of offenders by the National Probation Service. Her other key teaching interests are with second and third-year students in domestic and sexual violence.
Research Interests
Nicola's criminological research interests are in the `treatment' of sexual and domestic violence offenders, and the National Probation Service (NPS). Nicola's research considered the NPS as a criminal justice institution, and its capacity to adequately protect women from men's sexual and domestic violence. Such areas were largely the focus of her MSc in Criminology and PhD research.
After completing her MA in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and becoming a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Nicola's recent research interests are in pedagogical research. In a small-scale piece of research for her MA, Nicola aimed to understand what mattered to students during their academic studies. Nicola's related and recent pedagogical research is about student retention, seeking to understand how students experience their first-year at University. She interviewed students in-depth to understand their attendance at university to ultimately help inform strategies to enhance first-year students' experiences of academic study.
Nicola's current research dovetails with this earlier study, since it seeks to understand student retention from the perspectives of academics. Her current work involves in-depth interviews with first-year tutors and observing them whilst teaching. The research aims to assess the worthwhileness of pedagogies in the teaching, learning and retention of students, and to advise upon bettering university infrastructures to support these ends.
Nicola focuses upon carrying out qualitative interpretative research to make sense of the complexities and diversities of individuals' experiences.
Selected Publications
(2010) External Examiner, BSc (Hons) Criminology Programme, Teesside University.(2009) `Working with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence: Some challenges for probation-run perpetrator programmes', Conference Paper, Northern Rock Foundation Seminar Series, International Centre for the Study of Violence and Abuse, University of Sunderland.
