Dr Clare Wiper

Clare is an Associate Professor in Criminology at Northumbria University and co-lead of the Gendered Violence and Abuse Interdisciplinary Research Group. Her research examines various forms of gender-based violence (GBV) including economic abuse, tech-facilitated violence and coercive control. Clare's current ESRC project (2026-2029) is a collaboration with Dr Kathryn Royal and Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) and engages victim-survivors and other stakeholders in the co-production of a cross-sector framework for responding to coerced debt in England and Wales. Alongside this, Clare is also researching the role of credit unions and CDFIs in responding to economic abuse (with Alice Merry). 

Clare's previous EPSRC/UKFIN+ project (2024-25) focused on "designing out" economic abuse in the UK banking industry (with Dr Belen Barros Pena & SEA) and her British Academy project (2021-2023) examined the nature, dynamics and consequences of coerced debt for women victim-survivors of domestic abuse. In 2023, Clare conducted an independent impact evaluation of the Economic Abuse Evidence Form - an initiative piloted by Money Advice Plus in partnership with SEA. Clare has also investigated online misogyny and abuse (with Prof Mike Rowe & Dr Ruth Lewis) and trauma-informed lawyering in the context of civil claims for sexual violence (with Dr Nikki Godden-Rasul). Her work adopts qualitative, ethnographic and participatory design methodologies, is committed to intersectional analysis, and typically draws upon a feminist political economy theoretical framework.

Clare welcomes enquiries from prospective students who wish to undertake a PhD about any topic relating to GBV – especially projects about economic abuse, post-separation abuse, tech-facilitated abuse, misogyny and incel culture, and the political-economic causes and consequences of GBV. Clare is the ESRC NINEDTP Pathway Lead for Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work and can support prospective PhD students with their applications. Clare is also coordinating editor of Feminist Legal Studies and welcomes informal enquiries from scholars considering submitting work to the journal.