Leah Moyle obituary

My friend and research collaborator Leah Moyle, who has died aged 38 from a rapid onset brain tumour, was an academic in the fields of criminology and sociology.

A lecturer in the criminology department at Plymouth University and a member of the editorial team of the journal Methodological Innovations, thanks to her wide-ranging research work she was but a short step away from achieving a full professorship before she died.

Leah was born in Truro, Cornwall, to Joan (nee Richardson) and Geoff Moyle, who were both Cornwall county council employees. After attending Falmouth community school, she studied sociology and criminology at Cardiff University, where she obtained a first-class degree, followed by a master’s in criminology at Plymouth University.

Leah then progressed to a PhD at Plymouth, looking at how both social supply of recreational drugs by friends and “user-dealer”’ supply of drugs such as heroin differs to conventional notions of drug dealing, and considering how this should be reflected in sentencing policy.

I was Leah’s primary PhD supervisor, and her research was the beginning of a 13-year collaboration between the two of us. Her early research led her to become particularly interested in the difference between “drug dealers proper” and those vulnerable people who are groomed, manipulated or coerced into drug dealing, as is the case in much “county lines” drug supply.

Having completed her PhD in 2015, the following year Leah took up a post as a lecturer in criminology at Royal Holloway, University of London, before becoming a post-doctoral research fellow at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, from 2016 to 2018.

On her return to the UK she rejoined Royal Holloway as a lecturer, promoted to senior lecturer in 2019, and then was appointed as a lecturer at Plymouth University in 2023, allowing her to move back home to Falmouth – a long-nurtured aim.

Outside academia she enjoyed spending time with her young family, sea swimming and travelling.

She is survived by her husband, Ralph Gifford, a chartered surveyor whom she married in 2018, their children, Luna and Finn, and her parents.