Dr Amber Phillips

Qualifications:

BA(Hons), MA, PhD, FHEA

Position:

Senior Lecturer in Criminology

Department:

HAS - Health and Social Sciences

Telephone:

+441179656261

Email:

Amber.Phillips@uwe.ac.uk

Social media:

About me

Having initially trained as a translator, Amber's journey as a criminologist began in 2012 while she was living and working in Calabria, Italy. Her experiences with anti-mafia organisations inspired her AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Bristol, which she successfully defended in 2018.

Amber's primary research interests are organised crime and economic crime, both of which draw on her continuing interest in mafia-type groups. She has developed collaborative partnerships with law enforcement practitioners and fellow academics in the UK and abroad, and is a member of the ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime, as well as the RUSI Strategic Hub for Organised Crime. Her work has been published in international journals including Trends in Organised Crime, and she is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Economic Criminology. She is an expert reviewer for funding bodies including the European Commission and the Independent Social Research Foundation.

Amber's most recent work has focused on the social reuse of confiscated mafia assets in Italy, and novel approaches to measuring success in asset recovery in England and Wales, supported by a VC Early Career Researcher Award. In 2026 she was awarded £90,000 by the UK Home Office and National Economic Crime Centre for a research project investgating the deterrent impact of asset recovery legislation.

Amber leads the final year core criminology module Transnational Crime and Comparative Criminology and the optional final year module Organised Crime, as well as the Crime, Media and Culture module in the second year. Amber has been nominated and shortlisted for the UWE Outstanding Teacher Award, and has written teaching-focused articles for Times Higher Education. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has served as a mentor for the WHEN 100 Black Women Professors NOW programme.

Funding Awarded

Area of expertise

• Organised crime
• Mafia-type crime
• Economic crime
• Asset recovery
• Crime and the media

Publications

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