School of Criminology, Sociology and Policing

With partners from University of Bristol, Professor Iain Brennan is exploring the impact of childhood adversity on violent crime in adolescence and early adulthood.

The project will link the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children survey to police records for the first time. And has been awarded over £294,000 in funding as part of the Economic and Social Research Council Secondary Data Analysis Initiative

The result will be a detailed exploration of how the timing and type of adverse childhood experiences influence violent behaviour across the lifecourse.

Kay Brady and Dr Alexander Ornella are evaluating the process and impact of Humberside Police Heroin and Crack Action Area initiatives.

The research will evaluate the police initiatives that aim to explore ways to reduce drug use and offending; understand the drivers behind problematic heroin and crack use; and explore links between drug use and serious violence.

The evaluation – which has secured £11,000 of funding from the Home Office – will outline best practice initiatives for Heroin and Crack Action Areas helping these to be adopted across other regional police forces.

Dr Simon Green is the new Chair of a thriving network of victimology researchers across Europe.

The network, 'Cultures of Victimology: Understanding Processes of Victimization across Europe' is funded by a European Cooperation in Science and Technology Action grant worth almost €500,000 and involves researchers from 35 European countries.

This community of researchers aim to advance the understanding of victims and victimisation across the continent.

Dr Simone Santorso’s research – in collaboration with Dr Alica Kidd at the Wilberforce Institute and colleagues from University of Sheffield – is laying the ground for an innovative multiagency strategy to tackle criminal networks.

The research has been awarded an N8 Policing Research Partnership small grant of £25,000 and will challenge the main literature on prisons. The aim is to produce a different understanding of the totalitarian nature of detention facilities.

It will also add a new and different perspective on OCG networks and explore their recruitment capacity. Applying the modern slavery paradigm to OCGs, the research will gather innovative and groundbreaking knowledge on how criminal networks exploit the nature and vulnerabilities of local communities including prison communities; rivalries between different socio-professional groups; and governance deficiencies.

Professor Monica Magadi – in conjunction with colleagues across the University (Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute for Clinical and Applied Health Research, Human Geography and History) and partners in Sub-Saharan Africa – has been awarded over £195,000 from QR-Global Challenges Research Fund.

The funding will support four global health research projects in Sub-Saharan Africa

• ‘Evolving HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Most affected Communities of Eastern and Southern Africa: Understanding the Role of Culture and Global Civil Society’
• ‘Schools Health Promotion Project in Jigawa State, Nigeria’
• ‘Barriers and Attitudes Toward Sexuality and Reproductive Health Education in Primary Schools in Malawi: a Pilot Study’
• ‘A Community-Based Health Approach to Improving Adolescent Sexual/Reproductive Health in Homa Bay County, Kenya – a Pilot/Scoping Study’.

As a result of the funding, pilot projects have been implemented and international networks with partners in Sub-Saharan Africa have been established to support the University’s global health research programme.

Dr Bev Orton is leading an exploration of how participatory theatre and events – organised with and by sex workers, mainly women – can challenge the constraints of a criminal justice system that enables police brutality and sexual violence and raise aspirations and self-confidence of who undertake sex work in order to sustain themselves and others.

Dr Orton is delivering this research through her role as consultant on the GlobalGrace project; which is led by Goldsmiths, University of London and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Global Challenges Research Fund.

GlobalGrace investigates the development, welfare and wellbeing of people in lower-income countries who are marginalised by a range of intersecting gender inequalities. Through arts-based events and exhibitions, the project visibly embodies the experiences of those intersecting forms of inequality and their impact on people's wellbeing.

The project demonstrates how situations of marginality may create possibilities for challenging social divisions and producing new cultures of equality.

Featured project.

Global Grace