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Dr Alpa Parmar specialises in race and criminal justice and her research focuses on the intersection between criminal law, race, and migration control. Her empirical work has explored the impacts of police involvement in migration control, the operation of immigration tribunals for foreign national people involved in the criminal justice system and the uneven consequences of these processes for racial minorities. Theoretically, Alpa is interested in the potential for criminal justice encounters to influence and shape experiences of racism, citizenship, belonging and nationality. She has also conducted life history research with young people belonging to minority ethnic groups who have become entangled with the criminal justice system. Alpa is currently working on a project that examines the relationship between guilty pleas and race.

Alpa is an Associate Director of Border Criminologies and former academic member of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales. At Cambridge, Alpa lectures and supervises students in criminal law, criminology, sentencing and the penal system, criminal procedure and evidence, and criminal justice and human rights.

Dr Parmar completed her BA in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge, following which she gained an MPhil in Criminology and PhD at the University at Cambridge. Alpa held a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, and she was Departmental Lecturer at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford prior to joining the Law Faculty at Cambridge in 2022.