Wanda Canton

Wanda’s PhD asks whether the community, as an alternative to the criminal justice system, might reproduce modes of policing and neoliberalism. She explores whether this contradicts the aspirations of contemporary abolitionism—the movement against prisons, police and policing. Wanda is interested in how insider/outsider binaries are created and in different contexts, such as via academic and community gatekeeping. Wanda interweaves musicology and critical theory, exploring how music could inform abolitionist praxis.

Wanda is critical of the criminalisation of rappers and rap music, particularly focusing on Grime and UK Drill.

In 2022 Wanda founded Sonic Rebellions, an international network of artists, activists and academics exploring the relationship between sound and social justice. The network aims to have participatory events bi-annually and is currently finalising its second book under Routledge.

Wanda teaches criminology and is most interested in themes of policing, punishment, subjectivity, psychoanalysis and radical politics. She is passionate about experiential, decolonial and interactive learning. 

She has previously worked in community and forensic mental health and support services as a practitioner, consultant and service manager with a focus on peer support, co-production, trauma and recovery.

She is currently interested in collaborations and projects which involve abolitionism, community and commons, musicking, anti-racism, and socio-sonic politics.  

Seminar lead and/or lecturer for the following modules:

• Punishment, Power and the State (2022, Brighton)
• Theories of Crime (2022, Brighton)
• Police and Policing (2022, Sussex)
• Thinking Like a Criminologist (2022, Sussex)
• Debates and Conflicts in Criminology (2024, Brighton)