Dr Caroline M. Parker is an anthropologist at the University of Manchester. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, an Ivy-League university that delivers undergraduate education in prisons in New York State. Since returning to England in 2019, Caroline has been striving to make higher education available in prisons in her own country and has been the driving force behind the development of University-in-Prison. She is a member of Bard Prison Initiative’s Global Community of Practice, a network of educators dedicated to developing prison-based higher education. She has written over twenty articles at journals including the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr Jessica Neptune is Associate Director of National Programs for the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), which delivers undergraduate degrees in the Liberal Arts to incarcerated students in New York State on a tuition-free basis. BPI is now over twenty years old, and its incarcerated students have collectively earned over 600 degrees. Today, Jessica leads a Global Community of Practice and Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison. She has written for the Journal of the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs and the Journal of Social History.