Lesley McAra holds the Chair of Penology in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh, and is Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. For the past twenty-seven years, she has been Co-Director of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime. She has won multiple prizes for research impact, including the ESRC Award for Outstanding Public Policy Impact, and was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List of 2018 for services to Criminology.