Mr Tony Murphy

Professional biography

Tony started as a Staff Tutor in September 2019. Before that, he worked as a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University from 2013, and prior to that, a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Westminster (2008 to 2013). He has also held teaching posts at Oxford, Essex, Manchester, and MMU, and worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Social Policy at LSE.

Tony has worked at the OU since 2007 in one form or another, when he began as a student enquiry and registrations advisor, and then subsequently a faculty assistant, and then a tutor. As a Staff Tutor, he manages clusters for DD105 and DD311, and he is on the module team for DD212 and DD315. In addition to this, he has written book chapters and VLE for DD102 and DD215. Tony led the organisation and delivery of the 2021 BSC Annual Conference at the Open University. He currently serves on the University Senate. He is departmental communication lead. Between 2023 he was The OU's criminology lead for a DfE college partnership project.

Tony been an external examiner or external validation panel member for eight universities in total - presently external examiner for Birmingham City University, and academic reviewer for Nottingham College.

Tony is module convenor for the University of London Worldwide Undergraduate Laws criminology module.

Tony is studying to complete a DPhil at Oxford, researching penal transportation from Britain to Australia. He holds an MSc from Oxford; an MSc and BSc (hons) from LSE; several postgraduate qualifications through the Open University; and a PgCert Learning in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Research interests

Tony's research interests span the Social Sciences broadly, and he has researched and published in areas related to criminological theory; punishment; higher education; social inequalities; and history and crime. His main focus at present, is work on penal transportation. He has written a Criminology textbook for SAGE.