Staff profile

Jianxuan is a PhD candidate at Durham Law School. She earned a Bachelor of Law at Minzu University of China (2017-2021). Following this, she achieved her Master of Law degree from Georgetown University Law Center (2021-2022). She received the Georgetown Law Merit-Based Scholarship, graduated with Distinction, and was honoured on the Dean’s List. Deepening her passion for Criminology, she subsequently completed an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Edinburgh (2022-2023). 

She is currently a part-time tutor, teaching seminars on Introduction to English Law and Legal Methods (ELLM) and tutorials on UK Constitutional Law for the 2024/25 academic year.

Current Research

Jianxuan’s PhD research, supervised by Prof Thom Brooks and Dr Zhiyu Li, focuses on the conceptualisation and implications of penal populism. Her research project has been awarded the Modern Law Review Scholarship. 

Penal populism reflects a public preference for severe punishments, often side-lining defendants’ rights in favour of community interests and victim welfare. An example is the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ provision in the US, which mandates life imprisonment for individuals convicted three times, a response to growing public demands for harsher penalties. Through an analysis of daily discourses among the Chinese people, which often indicates a marked preference for capital punishment and retributive justice, Jianxuan delves into penal populism in the Chinese context. Her research titled ‘Understanding Penal Populism in Contemporary China: Nature, Driving Factors and Implications for the Chinese Criminal Justice System and Society’ delves into three core questions:

1. How is penal populism uniquely characterised in China, and how does it compare to other contexts? 2. What factors—social, economic, political, cultural, and the pandemic's influence—have catalysed its growth in China? 3. How has penal populism reshaped China’s criminal justice approach and societal norms, particularly in convictions, sentencing, and law enforcement?

Publications

Conference Paper

Hu Jianxuan, ‘Penal Populism: A Perspective on Social Shifts and Psychosocial Demands’ (Criminology Goes East, 24^th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, September 2024) 

Hu Jianxuan, ‘The Conceptualisation of Penal Populism: Dispelling Misunderstandings’ (From Words to Action: Rethinking Justice in a Globalised World, 10^th Edinburgh Postgraduate Law Conference, May 2024)

• Criminal Law, Criminology, and Criminal Justice
• Chinese Law and Society