Dr Martha Newson

Martha Newson

Dr Martha Newson researches group bonding, conflict, and altruism. She has worked with football fans extensively in the UK, Australia, Brazil, and Indonesia to tackle questions of loyalty, intergroup violence, perceived kinship, stress, social maladjustment, and self-sacrifice. This has led to appearances on a Spielberg-produced documentary series, Sky and across the BBC. Martha currently conducts long-term research on group bonding, prison behaviour, and reoffending with Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and the Ministry of Justice in the UK, in which prisoners enrol on football-based interventions led by major football clubs, supported by the Twinning Project. She is also leading projects with fundamentalist Muslims, women’s groups, and football fans.

Martha has a BSc from the University of Sussex (Human Sciences, 2011), and an MSc and ESRC-funded St Cross scholarship DPhil (2017) from the University of Oxford (Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, 2013; 2017). She now manages a large grant as part of her UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship at the University of Kent.

www.marthanewson.com