Victoria has worked in the women’s rights sector since 2006. Her current project (2020-2022, British Academy) is entitled 'Unsilencing Sexualised Torture' and focuses on addressing support for women survivors of this form of violence (with the Danish Institute Against Torture). She recently led an ESRC Future Research Leader Project (2016-2018) which explored socially harmful practices in asylum processes in Britain, Denmark and Sweden.

Vicky is co-coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control; associate director at Oxford University's Border Criminologies, specialising in grassroots advocacy and international impact, as well as with our partner institution the Border Observatory in Australia; and trustee at Statewatch EU. She is also consultant editor of Justice, Power and Resistance journal, and on the editorial boards of Criminology and Criminal Justice; Incarceration and Current Issues in Criminal Justice, has been visiting scholar at Lund University (Sweden) and Monash University (Australia).

Having acted as consultant on the BAFTA award winning BBC series Exodus: Our Journey to Europe, she has also published extensively on women’s rights across multiple international forums, with one book - Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System - winning the British Society of Criminology Book Prize in 2018. She is co-producer of the ‘Right to Remain Asylum Rights Navigation Board’ with Lisa Matthews (R2R) which has been implemented across 130 organisations across the UK, Europe and Hong Kong to enable migrants applying for asylum to navigate the complex labyrinth of asylum laws and policy.

Vicky’s PhD (2008-2011, LJMU) investigated barriers to support for women seeking asylum in the UK who have been subjected to sexual violence during conflict and civil unrest. In 2013 I was awarded an Early Career Research grant from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) to undertake research with The Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY) in Copenhagen, investigating psychosocial responses to women survivors of conflict. She continues this partnership today.