Adam Lynes
Biographic Data
| ID | 4076685 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Lynes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam |
| FAMILY NAME | Lynes |
| SIGNATURE | LYNES A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birmingham City University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1502-5345 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The clickable carnival
This conceptual paper explores the 2016 killer clown event as a symbolic and affective spectacle embedded in the cultural logic of late capitalism. Moving beyond the limitations of moral panic theory, we argue that the clown functions not as a folk devil but as a hyper-normalised figure of commodified fear, circulated, aestheticised, and ritualised through digital media. Drawing on frameworks from cultural criminology, ultra-realism, hauntology, …
On the afterlives of incarceration
This exploratory paper uses cross-disciplinary expertise to interrogate the discourses used in a UK decommissioned prison functioning as a dark touristic destination in 2023: Shrewsbury prison. We use collective insights from media analysis, critical stylistics and criminology to ask how touristic prisons such as this construct true crime, and what place this construction has in the local/national community. In so doing, we highlight the need for…
Artificial Intelligence, Capitalism, and the Logic of Harm
This paper seeks to advance a critical criminology of artificial intelligence (AI) by exploring how AI technologies function as mechanisms of systemic harm under late capitalism. Moving beyond sensationalist concerns regarding malicious actors utilising AI for nefarious purposes, we interrogate how AI reconfigures labour, governance, and social control in ways that intensify inequality and erode worker autonomy. Drawing from ultra-realism, zemiol…
Queenpins
Despite increasing recognition within mainstream media, criminology is yet to offer a substantive analysis of female participation within the upper echelons of organised crime. As such, this exploratory paper aims to offer an insight into the key themes identifiable within the context of high level, female, drug suppliers. Identifying thirty-six case studies, this exploratory paper combines descriptive statistics and a Fisher’s Exact test with Cr…
Dark Destinations
From the Alcatraz East Crime Museum and Jack the Ripper guided tours to the Phnom Penh killing fields, ‘dark tourism’ is now a multi-million-pound global industry. Even in the most pleasant tourist destinations, underlying harms are constantly perpetuated, affecting both consumers and those who work or live around such tourist hotspots. Highlighting 50 travel destinations across six continents, expert criminologists, psychologists and historians …
Grand Theft Heutagogy
This paper explores the utilization of the video game Grand Theft Auto as a unique tool within the lecture theatre to develop contemporary heutagogy. Drawing upon the authors’ personal reflections in the form of an autoethnographic account across a four year period, the challenges and benefits of utilizing the approach within in-person and virtual learning environments is interrogated. Utilizing video games as a means to ensure students are activ…
Video Games Crime and Next-Gen Deviance
The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, freely available to read online. Drawing on the emerging deviant literature perspective, this book explores a range of culturally embedded harms and other activities to offer new insight on the idea that video games are intertwined with forms of deviancy
Thug Life
This paper seeks to develop an understanding of interpersonal violence within an urban landscape. An increase in violent crime has garnered intense media attention with drill—an emerging subgenre of hip hop—being sighted by media outlets as a causal factor for the rise in gang-related violence. Within this perspective, the Metropolitan Police took action, which affirmed this narrative. This paper seeks to refute such simplistic discussions of int…
Benjamin’s ‘flâneur’ and serial murder
This article seeks to develop criminological theory with the application of a literary device known as the ‘flâneur’ – an individual described as a ‘stroller’ – to serial murderer Levi Bellfield. With this application of the ‘flâneur’ to the phenomenon of serial murder, this article provides a fresh theoretical ‘lens’, and specifically sheds light on how particular serial murderers operate and evade detection in modern society. The importance of …
What’s the deal with ‘websleuthing’? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces
This article explores websleuthing, a phenomenon widely discussed and debated in popular culture but little-researched by criminologists. Drawing upon a review of existing literature and analysis of news media representations, we argue that websleuthing is much more diverse than previously thought. Encompassing a wide range of motives, manifestations, activities, networked spaces and cases, websleuthing has a variety of impacts upon victims, seco…
Driven to Kill
Despite the wealth of academic literature relating to serial murder, there has been little research into how the occupational choice of serial killers influences their behaviour and subsequent offending. This article seeks to address this current gap by first examining the occupational history of known British serial murderers and determining if there were any particular work environments which were commonly selected. It was determined that there…
A Taxonomy of Male B ritish Family Annihilators, 1980–2012
This exploratory article presents an overview of B ritish, male family annihilators from 1980 to 2012. In doing so it provides a range of criminological information relevant to the incidents being described, and offers a taxonomy of four different types of annihilators that moves discussion beyond ‘revenge/altruistic’ categories
Zola and the Serial Killer
This article presents a critical analysis of Emile Zola’s Le Bête Humaine – a critical analysis which forms the basis of a case study of the real-life, British serial killer Robert Black. The fictional character of Jacques Lantier, a train driver living in France in the late 19th century, who is plagued by thoughts of committing murder is compared to Black - a former PDS van driver - who has been convicted of murdering four young girls between 19…
What’s the deal with ‘websleuthing’? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces
This article explores websleuthing, a phenomenon widely discussed and debated in popular culture but little-researched by criminologists. Drawing upon a review of existing literature and analysis of news media representations, we argue that websleuthing is much more diverse than previously thought. Encompassing a wide range of motives, manifestations, activities, networked spaces and cases, websleuthing has a variety of impacts upon victims, seco…
Thug Life
This paper seeks to develop an understanding of interpersonal violence within an urban landscape. An increase in violent crime has garnered intense media attention with drill—an emerging subgenre of hip hop—being sighted by media outlets as a causal factor for the rise in gang-related violence. Within this perspective, the Metropolitan Police took action, which affirmed this narrative. This paper seeks to refute such simplistic discussions of int…
Benjamin’s ‘flâneur’ and serial murder
This article seeks to develop criminological theory with the application of a literary device known as the ‘flâneur’ – an individual described as a ‘stroller’ – to serial murderer Levi Bellfield. With this application of the ‘flâneur’ to the phenomenon of serial murder, this article provides a fresh theoretical ‘lens’, and specifically sheds light on how particular serial murderers operate and evade detection in modern society. The importance of …
Zola and the Serial Killer
This article presents a critical analysis of Emile Zola’s Le Bête Humaine – a critical analysis which forms the basis of a case study of the real-life, British serial killer Robert Black. The fictional character of Jacques Lantier, a train driver living in France in the late 19th century, who is plagued by thoughts of committing murder is compared to Black - a former PDS van driver - who has been convicted of murdering four young girls between 19…
A Taxonomy of Male B ritish Family Annihilators, 1980–2012
This exploratory article presents an overview of B ritish, male family annihilators from 1980 to 2012. In doing so it provides a range of criminological information relevant to the incidents being described, and offers a taxonomy of four different types of annihilators that moves discussion beyond ‘revenge/altruistic’ categories
Driven to Kill
Despite the wealth of academic literature relating to serial murder, there has been little research into how the occupational choice of serial killers influences their behaviour and subsequent offending. This article seeks to address this current gap by first examining the occupational history of known British serial murderers and determining if there were any particular work environments which were commonly selected. It was determined that there…
What’s the deal with ‘websleuthing’? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces
This article explores websleuthing, a phenomenon widely discussed and debated in popular culture but little-researched by criminologists. Drawing upon a review of existing literature and analysis of news media representations, we argue that websleuthing is much more diverse than previously thought. Encompassing a wide range of motives, manifestations, activities, networked spaces and cases, websleuthing has a variety of impacts upon victims, seco…
Benjamin’s ‘flâneur’ and serial murder
This article seeks to develop criminological theory with the application of a literary device known as the ‘flâneur’ – an individual described as a ‘stroller’ – to serial murderer Levi Bellfield. With this application of the ‘flâneur’ to the phenomenon of serial murder, this article provides a fresh theoretical ‘lens’, and specifically sheds light on how particular serial murderers operate and evade detection in modern society. The importance of …
Video Games Crime and Next-Gen Deviance
The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, freely available to read online. Drawing on the emerging deviant literature perspective, this book explores a range of culturally embedded harms and other activities to offer new insight on the idea that video games are intertwined with forms of deviancy
Thug Life
This paper seeks to develop an understanding of interpersonal violence within an urban landscape. An increase in violent crime has garnered intense media attention with drill—an emerging subgenre of hip hop—being sighted by media outlets as a causal factor for the rise in gang-related violence. Within this perspective, the Metropolitan Police took action, which affirmed this narrative. This paper seeks to refute such simplistic discussions of int…
Dark Destinations
From the Alcatraz East Crime Museum and Jack the Ripper guided tours to the Phnom Penh killing fields, ‘dark tourism’ is now a multi-million-pound global industry. Even in the most pleasant tourist destinations, underlying harms are constantly perpetuated, affecting both consumers and those who work or live around such tourist hotspots. Highlighting 50 travel destinations across six continents, expert criminologists, psychologists and historians …
Grand Theft Heutagogy
This paper explores the utilization of the video game Grand Theft Auto as a unique tool within the lecture theatre to develop contemporary heutagogy. Drawing upon the authors’ personal reflections in the form of an autoethnographic account across a four year period, the challenges and benefits of utilizing the approach within in-person and virtual learning environments is interrogated. Utilizing video games as a means to ensure students are activ…
Queenpins
Despite increasing recognition within mainstream media, criminology is yet to offer a substantive analysis of female participation within the upper echelons of organised crime. As such, this exploratory paper aims to offer an insight into the key themes identifiable within the context of high level, female, drug suppliers. Identifying thirty-six case studies, this exploratory paper combines descriptive statistics and a Fisher’s Exact test with Cr…
Artificial Intelligence, Capitalism, and the Logic of Harm
This paper seeks to advance a critical criminology of artificial intelligence (AI) by exploring how AI technologies function as mechanisms of systemic harm under late capitalism. Moving beyond sensationalist concerns regarding malicious actors utilising AI for nefarious purposes, we interrogate how AI reconfigures labour, governance, and social control in ways that intensify inequality and erode worker autonomy. Drawing from ultra-realism, zemiol…
The clickable carnival
This conceptual paper explores the 2016 killer clown event as a symbolic and affective spectacle embedded in the cultural logic of late capitalism. Moving beyond the limitations of moral panic theory, we argue that the clown functions not as a folk devil but as a hyper-normalised figure of commodified fear, circulated, aestheticised, and ritualised through digital media. Drawing on frameworks from cultural criminology, ultra-realism, hauntology, …
On the afterlives of incarceration
This exploratory paper uses cross-disciplinary expertise to interrogate the discourses used in a UK decommissioned prison functioning as a dark touristic destination in 2023: Shrewsbury prison. We use collective insights from media analysis, critical stylistics and criminology to ask how touristic prisons such as this construct true crime, and what place this construction has in the local/national community. In so doing, we highlight the need for…
Sociology (8 works) · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · History (4 works) · History (3 works) · Narrative (3 works)