UC researcher wins award for forging new directions in justice policy

Photo caption: University of Canterbury Senior Lecturer Dr Lin Mussell has won the Early and Emerging Career Researcher Award for 2025.

Dr Lin Mussell, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC), has won the University’s Early and Emerging Career Researcher Award for 2025.

The award is recognition of her outstanding national and international contributions to public policy relating to criminalisation, prisons and justice.

Dr Mussell moved from Canada to join UC in April 2023, and she has completed a book on the intergenerational impacts of carceral policies on whānau in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, which will be published early next year by the University of British Colombia Press.

The book examines how policy practices have impacts beyond an individual, across multiple generations and throughout the community. 

“There's a tendency to focus on people as problems, but I’ve followed a different approach. Appreciative inquiry, for example, involves focusing on strengths,” Dr Mussell says. “So, rather than saying this 17-year-old is the problem, looking at the fact that he was impacted by different policies, structures and institutions including state care and poverty, and that he will have ideas on how to create change. 

“I'm really interested in how different institutions interconnect; so state care, youth justice, involuntary hospitalisation, and education, and how all those places need to be sites subject to change. I’m keen to build a picture of how state decisions impact the person, their family and their community.”

Dr Mussell chose to study public policy in Canada after working for not-for-profit organisations. She wanted to make a difference and realised she needed to understand how government decisions are made to identify levers for change in the justice system. 

“I wanted to find ways to democratise policy making more. Right now, it's often very much a technocratic exercise. Citizens might feel a bit pushed out and, particularly, the people most impacted by policy decisions might not feel like they're engaged with or heard.” 

Dr Mussell understands that punitive justice approaches often have broad appeal. “People want to feel safe, and they want to see people make amends in certain ways. But some of those approaches aren’t necessarily effective or making things safer.”

Dr Mussell’s most recent journal articles have advanced concepts of deinstitutionalisation and trans-institutionalisation of prisons, governance of risk, and prison alternatives. She says being an academic allows her to pursue her passion for research. “I also really enjoy having students who are excited to learn. Some of them really want to understand the world better, and how they can create change, so their enthusiasm rubs off.”

She leads UC’s Master of Policy and Governance programme and has organised postgraduate field trips to Parliament providing master’s and PhD students with invaluable experience in public policy. 

Dr Mussell is a member of organisations that include people with lived experience of the criminal justice system. She shares her knowledge and policy expertise with the Aotearoa Ethics Committee and has also worked with Aotearoa Justice Coalition and People Against Prisons Aotearoa.  

She was also a volunteer facilitator in a public speaking group for men imprisoned at Rolleston Prison, near Christchurch. Dr Mussell says helping the participants build their writing and oratory skills was rewarding. “Sometimes they would share a narrative from their life, and you can learn a lot from them.” 

A thank you email from Rolleston Prison illustrates the impact of this work. “The feeling of being judged, not good enough, and that general barrier that most are faced with has been broken down in this group.”

Dr Mussell will receive her award at a UC Hui Whakamānawa | Celebration of Success ceremony on 3 December.