Dr Michael Rice

Michael Rice teaches postgraduate students at the Institute of Criminology. He began his undergraduate career at Oxford as a lawyer and continued it as a mediaeval linguist. He then worked for the Survey Research Centre at the London School of Economics. Subsequently, with funding from the Joseph Rowntree Trust, he directed a successful planning law reform campaign, and for a time he was Will Hutton’s gardener. Later, at Westminster, he worked as a researcher on education and health. While in a government-sponsored post as parliamentary liaison officer for the haemoglobinopathy advocacy groups, he was one of the founders of the group now known as the Genetic Alliance. Before arriving at Cambridge as a mature postgraduate student he had been active in local politics in north London, taking a particular interest in housing and the built environment. For his ESRC-funded doctoral enquiry into prisoners’ reading attainments he spent over two hundred days—but no nights—behind bars. For many years, he taught courses on crime and deviance, sentencing policy, statistical analysis and survey research methods. He maintains interests in neuroscience and moral philosophy.