Lorraine Gamman


Lorraine Patricia Gamman is professor of design at the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins in the University of [the Arts, London] which she founded in 1999.
Her taking of the oral history of professional shoplifter Shirley Pitts as part of her PhD kindled her interest in oral history as a form and lead to her book Gone shopping: The story of Shirley Pitts, Queen of thieves. In 2012, the production company Tiger Aspect bought an option to acquire the television and film rights to the book.

Selected publications

The female gaze. The Women's Press, 1988. Female fetishism: A new look. Lawrence & Wishart, 1994. Gone shopping: The story of Shirley Pitts, Queen of thieves. Signet/Penguin, 1996. Dirty Washing – The Hidden Language of Soap Powder Boxes, Design Museum 2001. Built Environment: Sustainability via Security: A New Look, 35, 2009.. ISSN 0263-7960Theft of customers’ personal property from cafes and bars. Problem-Oriented Guides for Police, Problem- Specific Guides Series, Guide no. 60. U.S. Department of Justice, Centre for Problem Oriented Policing, 2010.. CoDesign - International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 7. Special Issue on Socially Responsive Design, 2011. ISSN 1571-0882
  • Tricky design: The ethics of things. 2018.
Gamman has written many journal articles but some of the chapters in books she has written include:Reviewing Queer Viewing – The Gaze Revisited, 1995. In: A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men and Popular Culture, Routledge. Visual Seduction and Perverse Compliance: Reviewing Food Fantasies, Hidden Appetites and ‘Grotesque’ Bodies, 2000. In: ‘Fashion Cultures’, Routledge. Self-fashioning and the shoe: what’s at stake in Female Fetishism or Narcissism, 2001. In ‘Footnotes: On Shoes’, Rutgers University Press. Criminality and creativity: what’s at stake in designing against crime? In: Design Anthropology: Object Culture in the 21st Century. Springer, New York/Vienna, pp. 52-67, 2010. Reviewing the art of crime - what, if anything, do criminals and artists/designers have in common? In: Cropley, D. et al The Dark Side of Creativity. pp. 155–177. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010. Reducing Handbag Theft, 2012.. In: Ekblom, P. Design Against Crime: Crime Proofing Everyday Objects. Crime Prevention Studies 27. Boulder, Col.: Lynne Rienner. Female Slenderness and the Case of Perverse Compliant Deception - or Why Size Matters... In: Fashion Cultures Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. Routledge, pp. 296–304, 2013. Could Design Help to Promote and Build Empathic Processes in Prison? Understanding the Role of Empathy and Design in Catalysing Social Change and Transformation. In: Transformation Design: Perspectives on a New Design Attitude. Board of International Research in Design, 2015. Birkhäuser/ BIRD, pp. 83-100. Design for Empathy – why participatory design has a contribution to make regarding facilitating restorative values and processes, 2016. In: Gavrielides, T. Offenders No More: New Offender Rehabilitation Theory and Practice. NY: Nova Science Pub. What is “Socially Responsive Design and Innovation”?, 2015. In: Fisher, F. and Sparke, P. Routledge Companion to Design Studies. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
  • ''Is Nudge as good as We Think in Designing Against crime? Contrasting Paternalistic and Fraternalistic Approaches to Design for Behaviour Change, 2018 pp 216–234. In: Kristina Niedderer, Stephen Clune, Geke Ludden Design for Behaviour Change: Theories and practices of designing for change.''