Richard completed his Ph.D. in History at the University of Sheffield in 2011. His research interests are in the history of crime and justice in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, particularly penal practices and the interaction between print culture, public opinion and criminal justice. Between 2011 and 2013 he worked as a Research Associate at the University of Leicester on a Wellcome Trust funded project, Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse.

In 2012 he was awarded the Herman Diederiks Prize by the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice for his article ‘Print Culture, Moral Panic, and the Administration of the Law: The London Crime Wave of 1744’, published in the journal Crime, History & Societies.