11. Prison ethnographer Andrew Jefferson - scholar of tragedy and misery

In this conversation Andrew talks about his ongoing work in Myanmar and the concern he and his colleagues share for their colleagues and all the people of the country currently subject to a brutal military coup. He offers us engagingly honest accounts of his study in prisons across Africa and Asia and these give moving insights into the method of this ethnographer.

Andrew Jefferson is an ethnographer with a background in psychology. He is Senior Researcher with Dignity, Danish Institute Against Torture. Since 2000 Andrew has been working on issues related to prisons ‘beyond the west’ with a focus on penal practice and the dynamics and consequences of reform interventions targeting prisons in the global south.

We had a couple of technical hitches during the making of this conversation. You may notice them though they barely show after our editing, but our apologies for this, the content more than makes up for it.