Psychology

Profile

Background

I graduated from the University of Plymouth with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology in 2003 and began working shortly after in the field of crime and security.  I started my PhD studies (part-time) in October 2010 allowing me to maintain my professional career whilst furthering my academic qualifications.

Research Interests

My research interests and activities are concerned with understanding terrorist and criminal behaviour for Homeland Security and Counter-Insurgency operations.  In terms of crime, I continue to be fascinated by Forensic Psychology and although I initially began my career with an offender focus I have since developed more of a personal preference towards situational crime prevention and rational choice theories of deterrence.  This led me to develop interest in the potential to exploit research and policy which has been developed in the criminal environment to address the threat of terrorism.  Having researched radicalisation and extremism I favour the philosophy that it is possible to view crime and terrorism on differing ends of the same continuum and that if resolutions into such problems are to be found they are only likely to be effective if informed, from beginning to end, by the contribution of psychology.  In my opinion, any interventions developed to confront terrorism do so at the risk of exacerbating the problem by creating damaging social attitudes and in the worst case scenario creating new social tensions.  I hope to investigate this assumption, and challenge my own opinions, by exploring the relationships between social attitude and enforcement measures through doctoral level study.

Research Project

Title:  Social Attitudes towards counter-terrorism policy and legislation in the UK

As a democratic society we must ask how efficient do we want counter-terrorism measures to be and under what conditions are these measures appropriate?

Through my research I want to explore and understand why and how attitudes develop towards this modern dilemma.  I want to explore why some people hold negative views towards counter-terrorism and why some people whole-heartedly support it.  I want to understand how our other social beliefs and view of the world affects how we feel about counter-terrorism.  And maybe whether there are any evolutionary or survival instincts which shape our attitudes towards protection measures.  I hope to discover what determines the strength of our attitudes and whether there is a 'tipping point' at which counter-terrorism measures become acceptable or not.

My research aims to enable the ability to gauge current levels of acceptance and forecast the impact of specific counter-terrorism measures.
My Director of Studies is Prof Aldert Vrij with Dr Bridget Waller and Dr Edward Morrison as additional supervisors.