Simon Howell

Simon Howell is a Senior Researcher at the Centre of Criminology. He holds a PhD in political philosophy from Rhodes University, South Africa. His primary research areas include drugs, gangs, violence, and general mayhem. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Global Risk Governance Programme, which followed from completing a University Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship shared jointly at the Safety and Violence Initiative and Centre of Criminology, UCT.

His core research interest focused on the relationship between justice and violence, and how this relationship is made manifest both in the structures of modern governance and in the architecture of marginalised peoples’ identities. As such, he has conducted research in a diverse array of analytical domains and with people from many different walks of life, including teenage mothers, township youths, drug users, gangsters, and police officials.

He has published a number of academic articles, book chapters and reports, teaches a number of postgraduate courses, and comments regularly on select topics in the national press.