Ian Edwards is a senior lecturer in law.  His main areas of research are sentencing law and the place of victims in criminal processes.  His current research focuses on the place of sentencing guidelines in England and Wales.  He is also researching victim-centred substantive criminal laws.

He joined the Law School in September 2001 having previously worked as a research assistant at Nottingham Law School, a tutor at Cardiff Law School and a part-time lecturer at the University of Glamorgan. He completed his PhD in 2002 on the participation of crime victims in sentencing processes and the Victim Personal Statement Scheme.  From 2002 to 2006 he was a Community Panel Member for Norfolk's Youth Offending Team. Community Panel Members chair meetings at which young offenders are encouraged to face up to the consequences of their offending behaviour (including sometimes meeting their victims) and take responsibility for their actions. In 2002/3 he was a member of the Home Office's Steering Group on the Review of the Forensic Science Service.  He has also been on the committee of the Supporters of the Norfolk Community Law Service.

He has presented papers at several conferences on victims' rights. In August 2009, he presented a paper on "forgiveness in criminal justice" at an international symposium on victims' rights in Mito, Japan (his attendance was funded in part by an Overseas Conference Grant from the British Academy). In September 2007 he was a keynote speaker at a criminology conference in Adelaide entitled "Alternative Justice Systems: Are Victims Better Off?" In 2003 he presented two papers at a symposium on victims' rights in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Ian is interested in supervising students in the following broad areas: criminal law, in particular in the areas of criminal defences, causation, and art and the criminal law; the jury system; the role of victims in the criminal justice system.

Since 2008 Ian has been a visiting lecturer at the Deutsche Richterakademie in Trier, Germany.