Our researchers

Jack Adams (CJR PhD Centre Representative, School of Policy and Global Affairs) Jack is researching issues in connection with pre-trial justice, looking at bail and remand decision making in England and Wales. Jack is examining in particular how decisions are made about whether defendants are granted bail or remanded in custody, and as judicial assessments of risk, using a ‘pre-trial justice’ lens, ie raising questions about the consequences of bail decisions pre conviction.

Professor Emily Allbon (City Law School): Emily is a pioneer in legal design, and creator of City Law School’s award winning student/academic resources Lawbore and TL;DR, both dedicated to innovative ways of communicating the law visually. As part of her work ‘storying’ law in design friendly ways, Emily has used her innovative visual communication techniques in diverse settings; explaining the law around dating and consent for a schools project, setting out sexual and reproductive health rights for communities in Nepal and most recently, designing an emotional wellbeing toolkit for a family law support organization helping separated parents attending court in proceedings relating to their child(ren).

Dr Lindsey Blumell (School of Communication and Creativity): Lindsey works on how sexual violence and women’s rights are represented in news, rape culture, sexual harassment and sexism within newsrooms. Lindsey led research with the Women in News programme examining sexual harassment in newsrooms, producing practical resources for media organisations, include guidance on increasing gender balance and a toolkit for managing newsroom sexual harassment. Most recently Lindsey has examined whether and to what extent anti sexual harassment policies prevent harassment, thinking about how organisations communicate these policies and on how ‘boys club’ cultures sustain sexist newsrooms.

Dr Melanie Collard Osman (CJR Management Team, City Law School): Melanie looks at state crime, torture, dehumanisation and human rights, and at the processes that facilitate these. Most recently Melanie’s projects have included work around dehumanisation and hate crime. Melanie is developing a rehumanisation approach to past trauma allowing for the movement beyond polarity and past trauma. In June 2026 she organised a successful one-day multi-disciplinary conference with the Wiener Holocaust Library, exploring different victim centred approaches to institutions, responsibility and social change.

Dr Glenda Cooper (School of Communication and Creativity): Glenda works to improve crisis, humanitarian and trauma reporting, and has developed nationally recognised protocols and frameworks to change how journalists report crises. Increasingly Glenda is interested in the media representation of vulnerable groups, including women in prison – and is part of a participatory live journalism project exploring how media reporting of crime can harm individuals and communities.

Dr Jessica Corsi (City Law School): Jessica ‘s work sits at the intersection of violence, gender bias and international criminal law including sexual violence and reproductive violence. She is currently looking at gender bias in homicide defences, which will feed into the Law Commission’s 2026-7 focus as part of their homicide review, and at gender parity at the International Court of Justice, where she co founded the Working Group on Gender Parity for the International Court of Justice.

Dr Jennifer Fleetwood (School of Social Policy and Global Affairs):  Jennifer's work develops narrative criminology - a theoretical approach that foregrounds personal narrative in understanding crime and justice. Her work has looked at how women talk themselves into international drug trafficking and she has contributed to sentencing reform projects in the UK and internationally. Her current work examines the deployment of personal storytelling in public as a mechanism for justice.

Professor Dimitrios Giannopouloupos (City Law School):  Dimitrios has leading expertise in human rights and comparative criminal justice, and in particular in the way that human rights norms both do, and do not, operate within domestic criminal justice systems across Europe, with custodial interrogation rights and the exclusion of improperly obtained evidence a strong focus of his research. Most recently Dimitrios' work has centred on the rule of law, and threats to human rights and judicial independence. The Centre for Justice Reform futher benefits from Dimitrios’ innovative pedagogical ‘beyond the classroom’ initiatives (that he develops in his Head of Department role), which encourage our students to engage directly with policymakers, lawyers and other criminal justice stakeholders.

Dr Chris Hamerton (School of Policy and Global Affairs): Chris brings an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to socio-legal and criminological perspectives with an emphasis on the formation and development of criminal law, criminal justice policy and process, and white collar and corporate crime.  Most recently he has focused on historical and contemporary episodes of social change and conflict, organisational deviance and corruption - including the impact of technology on these areas.

Dr Julian Hargreaves (School of Policy and Global Affairs): Julian is a policing expert with a focus on disproportionality, and brings his expertise in large scale quantitative analysis to areas of policing research which have historically been dominated by more qualitative approaches, for example publishing one of the first studies to model large scale stop and search data specifically for Muslim communities. His wider work encompasses hate crime, Islamaphobia, antisemitism, and counter terrorism, as well as relations between minority communities and that state.

Professor Katrin Hohl (CJR Co-Director, School of Policy and Global Affairs): Katrin is an internationally recognised expert in the criminal justice response to sexual offending. Her research has two strands. The first is concerned with how police respond to sexual violence and domestic abuse. The second strand centres on public trust in the police, police legitimacy and the application of procedural justice theory to police interactions with victim-survivors of rape and sexual assault. Katrin's research – and in particular her role as joint project lead for Operation Bluestone Soteria - has transformed criminal justice responses to sexual violence and domestic abuse in England and Wales, in recognition of which she was awarded an OBE for Services to Victims of Sexual Violence in 2024.

Professor Peter Hungerford – Welch (CJR Advisory Board, City Law School): Peter is an expert in criminal procedure, criminal litigation and sentencing. Via his work as the cases editor of the Criminal Law Review, as a regular contributor to Blackstone’s Criminal Practice, and as a regular contributor to the Judicial College Crime e-newsletter, Peter’s expertise both highlights and helps to shape criminal justice policy and practice in England and Wales.

Dr Jenny Knox (City Law School): Jenny researches law as a tool for social change, and is interested in access to justice campaigning, and the relationships between law and disadvantaged groups, in particular law as a tool to challenge government policy.

Flavia Lamarre (PhD Representative and Administrator, City Law School): Flavia is researching women who commit offences after being coerced into offending by an intimate partner, and is working with the Centre for Women’s Justice on new proposals to better reflect the dynamics of coercive control via revised defences in law for women charged with this kind of offending.

Professor Paul McKeown (City Law School):  Paul’s work focuses on the law of evidence.  He is co-author of The Modern Law of Evidence, which has a domestic and international readership and is currently in its 15th edition.  He is also a member of The Criminal Law Review’s case commentary team and has written many commentaries on evidence cases. Presently, he is a member of an interdisciplinary team researching how members of the public might understand judicial directions on the criminal standard of proof.

Professor Eugene McLaughlin (CJR Advisory Board, School of Policy and Global Affairs): Eugene’s criminological areas of interest include policing and police accountability, criminal justice management, institutional scandal, crime and the media and public justice. Most recently, Eugene has been examining multi-agency approaches to serious urban violence and gangs, and courts and access to justice, especially the magistrates courts. He continues to research how major institutional failures become public scandals, and the role played by media, public inquiries, criminal proceedings and other forms of ‘public justice’.

Professor Sally McManus (School of Health and Medical Sciences): Sally’s work includes domestic abuse, victimisation, self harm and suicide, serios assault and experiences of prisoners. Most recently she has evidenced the strong relationship between domestic abuse and self harm/suicidality, reviewed domestic abuse perpetration and perpetrators’ contact with mental health services, and is currently undertaking work looking at the ‘indirect victims’ of serious violence.

Dr Anita Mehay (School of Health and Medical Sciences): Anita’s research focuses on health and social inequalities within the criminal justice system, particularly affecting children, young people and families, and racially minoritised communities. She leads Fathers Together, an NIHR-funded programme examining fatherhood among young men in prison and support for fathers and families affected by imprisonment. She has also led Safer Lives, research with parents of young people involved with Youth Offending Teams, and holds an NIHR award focused on strengthening evaluation methods in prison research. Her broader interests focus on inclusion health, and bridging research, policy and practice to improve outcomes for marginalised and underserved populations.

Dr Kyle Murray (City Law School): Kyle researches sexual offences, consent, deception and mistake, with a particular focus on when deception means consent is vitiated. More recently he has been focusing on contraceptive deception, non consensual pregnancy and reproductive coercion. Kyle helped shape the recent CPS guidance on sexual offences where consent is alleged to have resulted from a mistaken belief about another’s person’s sex or gender.

Professor Mark O‘Brien  (City Law School) Mark researches policing, public order and marginalised counter cultural groups, including how technology has changed counter cultural policing and on the legal regulation of ravers and travellers during Covid. He also looks at internet regulation, child sexual abuse, pornography and the dark web, thinking about the problems that technological change brings for policing. Most recently he has published on social media, QAnon, and moral panics, looking at the relationship between perceived threats and a regulatory response.

Dr James Rosbrook Thompson (School of Policy and Global Affairs) James’ main research areas are: racial disproportionality and criminal justice, serious youth violence, and criminal justice responses to urban violence. Recently, James has worked with inner-London authorities on serious youth violence, gangs and the disproportionate representation of Black, mixed-heritage and other minoritised young people in the criminal justice system. Most recently James evaluated the Islington Integrated Gangs Team, looking at how police, local government and other agencies work together with young people considered at risk of gang involvement or serious violence. He has also done substantial work on the disproportionately high representation of Black and minority ethnic young people in the criminal justice system in Islington and Haringey.

Dr Hallam Tuck (School of Policy and Global Affairs) Hallam works at the intersection of criminal justice, prisons and immigration control – detention and the criminalisation of migration. His core focus is border criminology, and he is currently leading a knowledge exchange project with North London Citizens examining asylum accommodation, bringing together asylum seekers with the third sector, policy professionals, local councils and Transport for London to identify problems and possible solutions.

Dr Ruth Weir (School of Policy and Global Affairs): Ruth researches policing, domestic abuse and violence prevention, engaging with police and policymakers especially in the area of teenage relationship abuse. Ruth has established a national working group involving the Home Office, Department for Education, Cabinet Office, Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Office, the College of Policing, Police Forces local government and the third sector which is contributing to an ongoing national discussion on how teenage relationship abuse should be defined and addressed.

Dr Cassandra Wiener (Co-Director, City Law School): Cassandra researches the criminalisation of domestic abuse, particularly coercive control. In 2021, Cassandra successfully campaigned for the extension of coercive control laws to ex partners of abuse – her proposals for reform were adopted by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Cassandra currently advises governments and activists around the world who are considering the doctrinal implications of domestic abuse law reform.

Tejal Roma Williams (City Law School): Formerly a Senior Crown Prosecutor and Defence Solicitor at Hodge Jones & Allen, Tejal is Supervising Lawyer at City Law School’s award winning City Community Legal Advice Centre (CityCLAC) and Law In Real Life (LawIRL). Tejal co-directs the City Law School Innocence Project, which launched at the Supreme Court in 2024 and is only the fifth official Innocence Project in the UK. Students are trained to investigate potential miscarriages of justice and draft appropriate applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Tejal also co-founded the IPP Appeals Service where students examine whether there is a legal basis for challenging sentences handed down within the Imprisonment for Public Protection framework that was abolished in 2012. Tejal sits on the Advisory Board for CourtWatch London, which is examining delays and the treatment of defendants in the London’s magistrates courts and Co-Vice Chair of the Racial Equality Committee at Women in Criminal Law (WICL) and a committee member of the Criminal Appeal Lawyers Association (CALA).

Professor Aldo Zammit Borda (City Law School): Aldo researches international criminal justice, accountability for mass atrocities and victim-survivor participation, with a particular focus on international criminal courts and tribunals. Formerly Head of Research for the Yazidi Justice Committee and for the informal Uyghur Tribunal, Aldo’s current project involves the establishment of a Community Based Truth Commission on the Ezidi genocide, which is due to convene in Berlin in November 2026.