Julia Buxton joined Liverpool John Moores University as Professor of Justice in 2024 following four years as British Academy Global Professor, hosted in the Department of Criminology at the University of Manchester.   Her primary area of research is the illicit drug trade including aspects such as digitalisation of supply, evolving synthetic markets, enforcement violence and the negative impact of drug criminalisation on women.

A Latin Americanist by background, Julia was adjunct professor of the Venezuela Studies Programme at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her work an international, policy and practitioner focus, including around themes of conflict, peacebuilding, security sector reform and violence reduction including working on the British Council 3-year project: ‘Developing Capacity in Peace and Conflict Analysis Among Female Pakistani Parliamentarians’ with Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi. She is currently working on the gendered aspects of drug policy on a project at the University of Hong Kong addressing the incarceration of women in Southeast Asia and changing patterns of women’s drug use in the region (led by Professor Karen Laidler). 

Julia’s recent book ‘What is Drug Policy For?’ (2025) examines how our current drug control regime came about. In it, she asks: if the current strategy is failing, how could it be better managed?