Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of applying for a PhD studentship in Criminology. The topic is female offenders in the criminal justice system. I'm not sure why I''m having so much trouble with it - I'm either completely overthinking it or it could be because I left the field and did psychology at postgraduate level. Either way, I am seriously struggling getting my ideas in order and getting a foothold. I've alighted on a narrative theory based approach to female offending as I feel this has largely been overlooked in the literature - ideally I'd like to take what I learnt during my psychology masters about narrative theory, interview female offenders and produce a smallest space analysis to confirm whether or not female offending narratives are similar to male ones (as per a study conducted with male offenders by Canter and Youngs in 2003). The only thing that worries me with this approach is that I'm afraid that the criminology department will tell me my proposal only benefits psychology as opposed to criminology. I would hugely appreciate any advice that could be given - I've emailed an old supervisor but she hasn't come back to me and I'm so desperate to do a PhD.

Thanks

Lula