Police Officer
Research

Better Policing, Safer Communities

The Better Policing, Safer Communities PhD cluster aims to produce research that improves community safety through better policing.

Professor Iain Brennan

The Better Policing, Safer Communities PhD cluster consists of four fully-funded PhD projects that have been co-produced with Humberside Police to address four priorities for frontline policing: improving police response to domestic abuse, collaborating to tackle violence, prevention of child criminal exploitation, and investigating online sexual exploitation of children.

 

Group lead

Professor Iain Brennan

Email i.brennan@hull.ac.uk
Telephone +44 (0)1482 465717

The Challenge

The Better Policing, Safer Communities PhD cluster brings together expertise from across the University to create a multidisciplinary PhD cluster. The aim of this cluster is to produce research that improves community safety through better policing and to produce researchers who will make a significant contribution to the future of policing and community safety through their research.

The Approach

Impact and collaboration are at the heart of these four projects. They are all designed to contribute impactful research that has immediate value to frontline policing. To facilitate this, the project researchers benefit from a novel, continuous co-production model of supervision that includes:

  • Three supervisors: two academics and a co-supervising senior officers from Humberside Police
  • Twelve weeks of placement with Humberside Police
  • Annual mini-conferences presenting to stakeholders
  • Monthly supervisor meetings and quarterly cluster meetings
Criminology student Megan Witty with Humberside Police

Aims

  • To advance the multidisciplinary nature of policing research at the University of Hull
  • To deliver research projects that address the challenges of contemporary policing
  • To develop researchers who apply cutting-edge ideas to the practicalities of contemporary policing
  • Projects

    Protecting children from organised crime gangs

    Bethany Darby (Supervisors: Dr Simon Green; Dr Luke Cartwright)

    Improving police response to domestic abuse

    Leticia Couto (Supervisors: Dr Nicola O’Leary; Professor Iain Brennan)

    Understanding the multi-agency sharing of information about violence

    Roksana Malkowska-Michalak (Supervisors: Professor Iain Brennan; Professor Thomas Phillips)

    Preventing online child sexual exploitation

    Hannah Allison (Supervisors: Dr Dionysios Demetis; Professor Yasmin Merali)

  • Group members

    Professor Iain Brennan

    Professor of Criminology | I.Brennan@hull.ac.uk

    Dr Luke Cartright

    Lecturer and Social Work Admissions Tutor | Luke.Cartwright@hull.ac.uk

    Dr Dionysios Demetis

    Senior Lecturer in Management Systems | D.Demetis@hull.ac.uk

    Dr Simon Green

    Associate Dean for Research & Enterprise and Reader in Criminology |  S.T.Green@hull.ac.uk

    Professor Yasmin Merali

    Professor of Systems Thinking | Y.Merali@hull.ac.uk

    Dr Nicola O'Leary

    Lecturer in Criminology | N.Oleary@hull.ac.uk

    Professor Thomas Phillips

    Professor of Nursing (Addictions) | Thomas.Phillips@hull.ac.uk

  • PhD students

    Hannah Allison

    Preventing online child sexual exploitation

    Dr Dionysios Demetis, Professor Yasmin Merali

    Leticia Couto

    Improving police response to domestic abuse

    Dr Nicola O’Leary, Professor Iain Brennan

    Bethany Darby

    Protecting children from organised crime gangs

    Dr Simon Green, Dr Luke Cartwright

    Roksana Malkowska-Michalak

    Understanding the multi-agency sharing of information about violence

    Professor Iain Brennan, Professor Thomas Phillips

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