Advisory Board

Andy has spent 20+ yrs in UK Law Enforcement, undertaking investigation and intelligence work concerning various types of serious crime, including drugs and excise operations and money laundering investigations. He has also undertaken work in behaviour analysis of potential offenders and have worked with the UK Interpol Bureau, identifying wanted global fugitives for a wide variety of crimes.

He spent several years working at the very heart of Online Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) within the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) and additionally worked on all types of online harms including graphic content, self-harm, suicide content, abuse and extremism. He assisted in setting up and enhancing the capabilities of a new CSE Bureau for the NCA, liaising with all platforms, NCMEC, other global organisations, all UK Police Forces and also Police Agencies worldwide.

Andy worked for a major social media company as a CSE Lead to identify and action globally related CSE content, training and supporting colleagues and offer guidance to legal team when dealing with legal requests from global Law Enforcement Agencies.

Professor Artur Garcez is Director of the Research Centre for Machine Learning at City, University of London. He holds a PhD in Computing (2000) from Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS).

Professor Garcez has an established track record of research in Machine Learning, Neural Computation and Artificial Intelligence. He is president of the steering committee of the Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning Association, and founding course director of City's MSc in Data Science.

Professor Garcez holds editorial positions with several scientific journals in the fields of Computational Logic and Artificial Intelligence, and has been Programme Committee member for several conferences, including IJCAI, IJCNN, NeurIPS and AAAI.

Ali Kelly works as the Research & Performance Manager at the Mayor of London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). She designs research and evaluation projects to better understand why violence happens and how to take action to prevent it.

The VRU is a multi-disciplinary team of specialists taking a public health approach to violence and acting as a champion for young people and communities across London.

Ali has experience in criminal justice and child welfare policy at both the regional and national level. Prior to joining the VRU, she worked at the Ministry of Justice Implementation Unit and is a former Government Innovation Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She holds a Master's in Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government.

Simon is currently the CEO of the Online Dating and Discovery Association (ODDA). Before this role, he served as the CEO of the Cyber Resilience Centre for London, a not-for-profit organization focused on aiding businesses and charities in reducing their exposure to common cyber threats.

In addition to his recent roles, Simon has a distinguished background in senior management positions across the public sector, both in the UK and internationally. He has been Programme Director for the National Police Air Service at the Home Office and served as a Strategic Advisor to Abu Dhabi Police in the United Arab Emirates.

Simon also works as an Associate for Total Politics (formerly Dods Training) specialising in policy and strategy and was recently appointed an Honorary Visiting Fellow at City, University of London. Outside of work, Simon is the Chair of Governors for two schools in Cambridgeshire and a link Governor for online safety.

Kate Reynolds is a Senior Online Analyst in Ofcom's Research and Intelligence team, where she leads on collection and analysis of user data from the online industry and is responsible for driving innovation in Ofcom's choices of research methods for Online Safety.

Kate has implemented a variety of methods for researching children's online experiences including project managing Ofcom’s Avatar and School survey research pilots and contributing to projects utilising automated data collection and social media analytics.

As well as project managing and leading chapters in Ofcom’s flagship Online Nation research publication, Kate has also convened workshops in the UK and internationally on the theme of researching children online.

Emma joined London Met in October 2022, after holding posts at De Montfort University and the University of Bedfordshire. She is a Chartered Health Psychologist who specialises in cyberpsychology.

She has conducted research in the area of cyberstalking, image based sexual abuse and technology facilitated abuse since 2005, working with partners in the third sector, higher education, the police and government bodies.

Emma has taught across the psychology curriculum at undergraduate and postgraduate level, with special focus on cyberpsychology, forensic psychology and health.

Emma has contributed to discussions of cyberpsychology in broadcast and print media, mostly in the areas of cyberstalking, image based sexual abuse and trolling.

Caroline (Cassie) Sipos brings a myriad of life experiences, creative problem-solving, design thinking and strategy, and on-the-ground REF2021 experience to her knowledge exchange and impact practitioner role at City St George’s.

Caroline works closely with Islington Council’s Community Safety and Cultural Enrichment teams, leading on regional innovation activity at City St George’s (using the pilot Regional Innovation Fund she hopes will continue as this important fund is a game-changer, enabling universities to collaborate on place-based initiatives with local authorities and community partners).  She participates in the Bright Lives Practitioner Network under the Bright Lives Alliance (part of Islington Council’s Communities, Strategy and Change Directorate) and is a member of the steering group. She is Project Lead for City St George’s’ civic partnership with Knowledge Quarter on the National Civic Impact Accelerator (NCIA) action learning programme and is the ‘face’ of City St George’s on Knowledge Quarter’s steering board.

Passionate about women’s safety, of which she has retail crime lived experience, she was delighted to present on the topic of how public engagement between universities and communities can influence policy change at the invitation of Hammersmith Business Improvement District at a Women’s Safety forum in Autumn 2023.

Philip has spent four decades advising investors, finance directors, ministers and select committees on separating benefit from risk in the digital world since setting up the National Computing Centre technology and policy assessment operation in 1982.

Before then he was an information systems professional, programme manager and corporate planner (from decimalisation to using technology to support an aging population).

In 1981 he co-founded the Parliamentary IT Committee (now PICTFOR), in 1988 he organised the first Women into IT Campaign and in 1993 became Secretary General of EURIM (now Digital Policy Alliance).

He has been a witness or specialist advisor to over a dozen select committees. In January 2024 he received an NPCC Commissioner’s Commendation for work (over two decades) on policing and safeguarding the on-line world.

With a background in education and research in the areas of security and policing, Alison Wakefield is Professor of Criminology and Security Studies at the University of West London. She is also a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, and a Commissioner on the National Preparedness Commission, an independent body promoting policies and actions to support the resilience of the UK.

From 2018 to 2020, Alison served as Chair of the Security Institute, part of a consortium of UK cyber security associations contracted by the UK government to develop and implement the UK Cyber Security Council, the self-regulatory body for the UK's cyber security profession.

Her current research interests relate to the intersection between security technologies and human behaviour, and the application of complexity science to security and resilience challenges. Alison’s latest book is Security and Crime: Converging Perspectives on a Complex World (Sage, 2021), and she recently led research for the ASIS Foundation on the threats, risks and opportunities for security presented by autonomous vehicles. Alison was named one of SC Media UK’s 30 Women of Influence in Cyber Security 2022.

David is Professor of Criminology at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies in the School of Law at the University of Leeds. His research interests are cybercrime, organised crime, policing and intellectual property crime. He has published a wide range of 50+ articles and 12+ books on these subjects and also has a sustained track record of interdisciplinary funded research in these areas from the EU FP6 & FP7, ESRC, EPSRC, AHRC & other funders, such as the Home Office and DSTL.

David has been a member of various Governmental working groups, such as the Ministerial Working Group on Horizon Planning 2020-25, the Home Office Cybercrime Working Group (looking at issues of policy, costs and harms of crime and technology to society), and the HMIC Digital Crime and Policing working group.

He has also been a member of various international working parties which include the UNODC cybercrime expert group. David is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a Fellow of the Higher Teaching Academy, and was a Turing Fellow (of the Alan Turing Institute) from 2018 to 2021.