Kyle Mulrooney

Dr. Kyle Mulrooney is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of New England and is passionate about building safe and healthy communities. He strives to prioritise the creative and imaginative potential of Criminology and, above all, for his research to have relevance and significance when it comes to practical solutions and policy.

Kyle’s current research agenda is centred in rural criminology which explores how aspects of cultural geography and locational context impact upon the types, incidences and responses to crime and access to related services. Here he has published on issues ranging from crime prevention and policing to drug consumption and criminal justice and is currently writing a monograph on Farm Crime for Bristol University Press (2023). Kyle occupies a number of leadership roles in the field, serving as the Co-Director of the Centre for Rural Criminology (UNE) and as the Vice President (elect) of the International Society for the Study of Rural Crime. He is a recognised international expert in rural criminology with his research and work having being utilised by policy-makers and industry in practice and called upon often in the media.

As a criminologist more broadly, Kyle has a particular interest in questions of how we as a society determine what is considered criminal, how we then respond to crime and why we elect particular solutions to do so. Following this interest. Kyle has researched and published in the sociology of punishment and comparative criminal justice and, more specifically, on the theoretical explanations around what it is that shapes cultural appetites for punishment. His recent book entitled Resisting the Politics of Punishment: The evolution of Canadian criminal justice policy (Routledge, 2022) examines how local history, cultures, traditions and values shape answers to questions of law and order.

Kyle has also published extensively in the area of human enhancement drugs, with consideration to aspects of their use, regulation, and subsequent forms of punishment. Together with colleagues, he edited the book Human Enhancement Drugs (Routledge, 2019) which broke novel ground by combining what were traditionally disparate areas of research and pushed forward our knowledge of what it means to be human in the 21st century. Drawing on this expertise, Kyle is a co-founder of the Human Enhancement Drug Network (HEDN) and serves on the Executive Board.

Kyle holds a Ph.D. in Cultural and Global Criminology from the University of Kent and Universität Hamburg, a MA in the Sociology of Law from the International Institute for the Sociology of Law and a BA (Honours) in Criminology and Justice from Ontario Tech University.