Gabrielle Watson

Gabrielle is currently pursuing an interdisciplinary research project entitled Judicial Nudging: The First Decade of the Scottish Sentencing Council. As an independent statutory body, the Council is tasked with devising sentencing guidelines for the criminal courts: the most significant development in Scottish sentencing law in a century. The project tracks the steady accretion of generic and offence-specific guidelines since 2018 and explores the legal and ethical implications of ‘nudging’ judges towards fair and consistent sentencing decisions.

Gabrielle is the author of the award-winning Respect and Criminal Justice (OUP 2020) and co-Editor of Sentencing, Public Opinion, and Criminal Justice (OUP 2025). With Professor Julian V Roberts KC (Hon), she is Series Editor of Palgrave Studies on Sentencing. Launched in Spring 2025, this series is the first of its kind in the field, commissioning works on sentencing of cross-jurisdictional significance. Gabrielle's research has been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the John Fell Fund of the University of Oxford. She has held Visiting Fellowships at the Cambridge Centre for Criminal Justice (2019, 2021), Downing College, Cambridge (2021), and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, Germany (2023).

In 2024, Gabrielle was appointed by the Lord Justice General to the Criminal Courts Rules Council for a three-year term. She is Advisor to the Sentencing Academy, a London-based organisation dedicated to developing expert understanding of sentencing in England and Wales and informing public debate. She has been engaged as a criminal justice expert for major media outlets including BBC News, BBC Radio, BBC World Service, and Times Radio. 

Gabrielle read for her doctorate at the University of Oxford and was formerly Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Law and at Christ Church (2017-19) and Shaw Foundation Fellow and Tutor in Law at Lincoln College (2019-23). She remains affiliated to Oxford as a Research Associate of the Centre for Criminology, where she is a regular visitor.

Criminal Law, Criminal Justice, Sentencing, Ethics, Philosophy of Punishment