Professor Daniel Briggs

Professor

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

I am an experienced researcher, writer and inter-disciplinary academic who uses ethnographic methods (observation, interviewing) to study social problems. I have dedicated much of the last 25 years to spending time with and studying homeless drug users, terminally-ill patients, refugees, prostitutes, gypsies, gang members, young offenders and deviant young people, political activists and protestors and economic migrants.

One of my most recent books, Dead End Lives: Drugs and Violence in the City Shadows (2017, Policy Press), won the Division of International Criminology’s Outstanding Book Award 2018 (selected by the American Society of Criminology). Other recent monographs include Climate Changed: Refugee Border Stories and the Business of Misery (2020, Routledge) and Hotel Puta: A Hardcore Ethnography of a Luxury Brothel (2022, RJ4All Publications).

I am also the lead co-author of Researching the Covid-19 Pandemic (2021, Bristol University Press) and Lockdown: Social Harm in the Covid-19 Era (2021, Palgrave), and am in the closing stages of finishing The New Futures of Exclusion (2023, Palgrave).

I have just published Sheltering Strangers: Critical Memoirs of hosting Ukrainian Refugees (2025, Policy Press) and have co-edited in press The Lost: Life, Loss and Legacy in Criminology (2026, Bristol University Press).

I am currently researching the luxury yacht industry and obese patients who seek low-cost, weight-loss surgery abroad.

Email Daniel

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Any social problem.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Fifteen years later, at the moral crossroads: retaining purpose and direction in the face of academic capitalism, Briggs, D. 18 Jun 2025, Embracing the Unknown, Bristol, Policy Press
Sheltering Strangers: Critical memoirs from hosting Ukrainian refugees, Briggs, D. 28 Mar 2025
The school of hard knocks: Systemic violence and the motivation to harm in boys' youth academy football, Gibbs, N., Briggs, D. 25 Aug 2025, In: Frontiers in Sociology
Clean Conscience from ‘Dirty Luxury’: Compliance, Profitable Unhappiness, and the Handwashing of Social Harm and Sexual Exploitation, Briggs, D. 1 Aug 2024, Compliance, Defiance, and ‘Dirty’ Luxury, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan
Critical Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic from the NHS Frontline, Lloyd, A., Briggs, D., Telford, L., Ellis, A. 1 Mar 2024, In: Sociological Research Online
The New Futures of Exclusion: Life in the Covid-19 Aftermath, Briggs, D., Telford, L., Lloyd, A., Ellis, A. 1 Dec 2023
Hotel Puta: A Hardcore Ethnography of a Luxury Brothel, Briggs, D. 1 Dec 2022
Lockdown: Social Harm in the Covid-19 Era, Briggs, D., Telford, L., Lloyd, A., Ellis, A., Kotzé, J. 11 Dec 2021

PGR Supervision

Esme Wragg TikTok Governance: Navigating Conspiracy Narratives and Vaccine Opposition in a Post-COVID World. Start Date: 01/10/2024
Michael Heyman Start Date: 01/10/2025
Esme Wragg TikTok Governance: Navigating Conspiracy Narratives and Vaccine Opposition in a Post-COVID World. Start Date: 01/10/2024 End Date: 17/10/2025