Dr Helen Baker

Profile

Biography

Dr Helen Baker has been a member of the academic staff at Edge Hill University since September 2010. She graduated from the University of Lancaster with an LLB Honours in Law in 1997 before completing a PhD in Law and Women’s Studies, funded by the ESRC, an empirical and theoretical study on women’s experiences of domestic violence; a research area in which she has maintained a long-standing interest. She has worked at Blackburn College, The University of Lancaster and The University of Liverpool in the past.

In 2003, she was a co-researcher on a Save the Children project on children’s experiences of domestic violence service provision, together with Dr. Helen Stalford and Professor Fiona Beveridge. The project began a particular interest in the needs of children and young people in relation to domestic violence laws and service provision; an area in which she has researched ever since. She has conducted research on the needs of teenage boys in relation to domestic violence and on their construction with reference to child-to-parent violence.

Her current work examines the gendered harms of the pharmaceutical industry on which she is currently writing a sole authored monograph for Routledge, and the construction of women who experience violence and abuse under the criminal law. She has written a forthcoming chapter with Dr. Eleanor Peters on the relationship between music and violence and abuse against women and girls in The Palgrave Handbook of Violence Against Women and Girls which will be published in 2026.

Helen is a member of the HiGSS department at EHU. She is also a member of The SLSA (Socio-Legal Studies Association) and the BSC (The British Society for Criminology).

Helen has been invited to speak at many practitioner conferences as a result of her specialist knowledge including for regional and national Children’s Services, Safeguarding Children Initiatives and Safer Communities Partnerships. Helen has also been an external examiner for both undergraduate and postgraduate research degrees in the past at St. Helen’s College, Liverpool John Moores University and Aberystwyth University respectively. Helen has a PG Certificate in Learning and Teaching from the University of Liverpool and is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Helen is currently Co-Subject Lead for Criminology Programmes.

Teaching

Helen currently teaches on the following modules at undergraduate level: 

CRI1143 Histories of Crime, Policing and Punishment (Module Leader)

CRI2232 Crime, Harms, Law and Justice (Module Leader)

SPY3140 Dissertation – Supervisor to L6 students 

CRI3121 Corporate Crime (Pharmaceutical Harms and Health and Safety Harms)

Helen has in the past, and currently also supervises Master’s and PhD students in her areas of expertise.