People
Members
Director
Sally McManus is Professor of social epidemiology in the Violence and Society Centre. She is also affiliated with the National Centre for Social Research and has previously been funded by MRC, ESRC and NIHR.
Her expertise in quantitative research methods and the measurement of mental health focuses on population trends and the social determinants of mental health, including the role played by violence and abuse.
Knowledge Exchange Manager
Kimberly Cullen is the Knowledge Exchange Manager for the UKPRP Violence, Health and Society Consortium. Her role is to optimise the impact of the research to reduce violence by engaging multiple stakeholders, to play a key role in developing and consolidating pathways to impact, and to develop the public engagement of the Consortium’s communications strategy. She has worked in the UK, the United States, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates in project / programme, stakeholder, and data management across government and academia.
Centre & Consortium Manager
Julia Sahin provides operations management at the Violence and Society Centre and programme management of the UKPRP Violence, Health and Society Consortium (VISION) research grant. She has worked previously in project management and executive support roles in HE and other not-for-profit organisations including making and managing translational science grants at the Wellcome Trust.
Deputy Directors
Vanessa Gash is Deputy Director of VaSC, and Reader in Sociology in the Dept of Sociology and Criminology. Vanessa is an empirical and interdisciplinary social scientist and has specialised in quantitative labour market research with expertise in both panel and cross-national data structures. Her work focuses on gendered differences in employment.
Vanessa leads the VISION consortium thread on the effects of violence on labour market outcomes. She is also a senior member of the research team for INTERFACED, a multi-country study looking at systems to maintain and enhance political participation across Europe. Her professional service includes membership of the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society, a Q1 and four-star impact journal.
She was awarded a DPhil from Oxford University and is a Research Affiliate of the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin and maintains links with the University of Lausanne, where she has obtained the status of ‘Collaborateur Scientifique’.
Ruth Weir is a Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow in Criminology in the Violence and Society Centre. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing on her expertise in Geography and Criminology. She specialises in using spatial statistics, quantitative methods and community asset mapping. Much of Ruth’s research focuses on domestic abuse and sexual offending and she is currently leading work on abuse in teenage relationships.
She is a steering group member of the Domestic Abuse Research Network (DARNet) and has worked on several research projects funded by UKRI, ESRC, Comic Relief and the Home Office. Prior to academia, Ruth held several research, intelligence and policy positions in local government and for the Home Office.
Researchers
Annie Bunce is a Research Fellow in Criminology at the Violence and Society Centre. She is a chartered member of the British Psychological Society. Her doctoral research explored prisoners’ motivation to participate in an innovative rehabilitation programme through the lens of Self-Determination Theory. She previously worked as a Research Officer at Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, conducting and analysing surveys on treatment and conditions with detainees in prison, young offender institutions, and immigration detention facilities.
Annie also has research and managerial experience working for third sector organisations, including Victim Support and the Samaritans. Annie has research experience across a number of areas spanning psychology and criminal justice, utilising both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Her research interests are focused on the impacts of and responses to domestic and sexual violence and abuse and workplace bullying and harassment, and rehabilitation and desistance from crime.
Darren Cook is a Research Fellow in Computer Science at the Violence and Society Centre. His research focuses on using natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to explore scalability issues across diverse areas including psychology, criminology, and healthcare. Prior to joining VASC, Darren worked at Imperial College London as a Research Associate and lead software developer for a health-support chatbot. He has previously held roles as a data scientist and IT implementation analyst and has worked in the defence and finance industries.
Elizabeth Cook is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Violence and Society Centre. She is a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford and has previously been funded by the UKRI ESRC. Her expertise in qualitative research methods focuses on fatal violence, gender, family, and voluntary sector responses to violence. She is the author of Family Activism in the Aftermath of Fatal Violence (Routledge, 2021).
Jessica Lynn Corsi is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the City Law School and the Violence and Society Centre. She has previously worked for the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Brunel University London, NYU Law Paris/HEC Paris, the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. Her expertise spans public international law, domestic law, and comparative law, combining traditional legal and social science research methods to understand how the law can prevent and alleviate violence and foster substantive and transformative equality.
Anastasia Fadeeva is a Research Fellow in Health Sciences in the Violence and Society Centre. She has research experience in public health, social epidemiology, medicine, and health psychology with an emphasis on health determinants, mental health, and health behaviours. Her doctoral research explored the predictors of positive retirement adjustment and ways to promote well-being and physical activity during retirement transition.
She previously worked at the Northern Hub for Veterans and Military Families Research at Northumbria University researching the distribution, patterns, and determinants of physical and mental health in the UK veterans’ cohort.
Ladan Hashemi is a Senior Research Fellow in Health Sciences at the Violence and Society Centre. Her research focuses on the application of advanced quantitative methods to explore the intersection of gender, domestic violence, and its harms to health and society. Her interdisciplinary research interests span social science and epidemiology, with a particular emphasis on gender-based violence, Adverse Childhood Experiences, health inequalities, and ethnic disparities, in the UK, the Middle East, and globally.
Alexandria Innes is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Violence and Society Centre. She has previously been funded by the UKRI AHRC-ESRC. Her expertise in the international politics of migration is situated at the intersection of migration studies and critical security studies in international relations. She is the author of Postcolonial Citizenship and Transnational Identity (Routledge, 2020).
Mattie Jones
Mattie Jones is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology and Criminology. Her funded research examines police performance, oversight, and organisational practice in England and Wales, with particular interest in how it affects responses to violence against women and girls.
Prior to starting her PhD in the UK, Mattie's professional and academic career has been focused on improving policy and practice related to sexual and gender-based violence and she has worked in the non-profit sector alongside domestic abuse shelters and response teams as a grant coordinator. Mattie also draws on professional experience within policing, serving as a sworn police officer in the US prior to completing her MSc at City St. George's.
Jana Kriechbaum
Jana is a PhD candidate at the Violence and Society Centre and the Department of Sociology and Criminology. In her doctoral research, she explores the situation around gendered harm and violence against women with insecure migration status in post-Brexit Britain through a feminist and intersectional lens. Jana specialises in participatory and creative research methods.
Prior to starting her PhD, she worked as an applied researcher and trainer in violence prevention and empowerment with migrant women and young people.
Dr Hannah Manzur
Hannah Manzur is a Research Associate in the Violence and Society Centre. Her doctoral research explores the relationship between gender, violence and Brexit, focusing on the impact of Brexit on rates of and responses to violence against women and girls in the UK. She previously worked as a Gender Policy Advisor at the European Parliament during Brexit.
Polina Obolenskaya is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the Violence and Society Centre, working on the Crime Survey for England and Wales. She previously worked at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, UCL Institute of Education and the Royal National Institute of Blind People. Polina is a social scientist with research experience across a number of social policy areas, including health and adult social care. Her research has focused predominantly on disadvantage and social and economic inequalities, and analysis of a range of national surveys.
Merili Pullerits
Merili Pullerits is a Research Assistant in the Violence and Society Centre, where she is working on a systematic review on sexual violence that occurs during undocumented migration journeys. She is also pursuing a PhD that examines the measurement and understanding of domestic violence reported to the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Merili has expertise in conducting both quantitative and qualitative research on violence against women and girls, and has previously held various Research Assistant and Research Associate roles focusing on trafficking in human beings, domestic abuse, sexual violence, and femicide.
Honorary Research Fellows
Olumide Adisa is currently embarking on a senior leadership role in the Greater London Authority to lead the Universal Free School Meals (UFSM) team and drive systems change in the Mayoral’s health and wellbeing work. Previously, Olumide worked as a Policy and Commissioning Manager at the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, developing London’s strategy for tackling violence against women and girls, and led the Complex Systems Strand within the VISION Consortium. Olumide specialises in complex systemic change theories and approaches to informing thinking and practice on violence prevention and mitigation and improving services and commissioning for all victims/survivors. She has authored various publications on violence, abuse, and intersectional equity including co-curating the book Tackling Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence: A Systems Approach.
Niels Blom is Lecturer in Social Statistics and Criminology at the University of Manchester. In his research Niels studies violence and abuse, socioeconomic and health inequalities, and the family. He leads projects on how domestic violence and abuse is related to labour market and health outcomes for the VISION Consortium. Additionally, Niels investigates how to integrate data across survey and administrative sources and has written multiple studies on the measurement and conceptualisation of violence in surveys and administrative sources.
Kat Hadjimatheou is the Director of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Essex. She is a criminologist and applied ethicist with a background in philosophy and qualitative criminology. She is interested in technologies and data used for policing, criminal justice and security. She works particularly in the field of domestic abuse, surveillance, criminal records, and human trafficking.
Affiliated Members
- Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, Senior Lecturer in Health Economics, University of Bristol
- Marianne Brown, Cellist, Educator and PhD Doctoral Researcher in Music and Transformation, City St George's, University of London
- Dr Sophie Carlisle, Evaluation Researcher, Health Innovation East Midlands
- Professor Gene Feder, Professor of Primary Care, University of Bristol
- Professor Steve Gillard, Professor of Mental Health, City St George's, University of London
- Dr Ava Green, Lecturer in Forensic Psychology, City St George's, University of London
- Dr Lea Hellmueller, Director of Research and Reader, Department of Journalism, City St George's, University of London
- Dr Leslie Humphreys, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice and Policing, Deputy Lead: Policing Strand of the Criminal Justice Partnership, The University of Central Lancashire
- Dr Madeleine Janickyj, Research Assistant in Natural Language Processing, University College London
- Dr Riikka Kotanen, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, City St George's, University of London
- Dr Becca Lacey, Reader in Social and Lifecourse Epidemiology, City St George's, University of London
- Dr Lauren McCarthy, Director of ETHOS and Senior Lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility, Bayes Business School, City St George's, University of London.
- Dr James Rowlands, Assistant Professor in Criminology, Durham University
- Professor Angus Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Health Informatics, Kings College London
- Dr Victoria Serra-Sastre, Reader in Economics, City St George's, University of London
- Professor Jaqueline Sin, Professor of Mental Health Nursing, City St George's, University of London
- Dr Leonie Tanczer, Associate Professor in International Security and Emerging Technologies, University College London
- Dr Lucy Trafford, DPhil Candidate, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford
- Dr Cassandra Wiener, Senior Lecturer and Co-founder and Director of the City Centre of Law and Criminal Justice, City Law School