Dr Amy Burrell is an Assistant Professor in Forensic Psychology at Coventry University. Alongside teaching, she is engaged in projects with a range of academic and practitioner partners. She is a founding member of the Crime Linkage International Network (C-LINK); a Leverhulme Trust funded research project which brought academics and practitioners from seven countries together to collaborate on research in crime linkage. Crime linkage – also known as comparative case analysis, linkage analysis, and case linkage – focuses on identifying crimes committed by the same offender using crime scene behaviour. This network is ongoing and aims to establish a coherent, evidence-based approach to the detection of serial offenders using crime linkage techniques. The funded phase of the research is completed, with partners now working together to write up the findings from two research projects. Work is also ongoing to develop new research ideas and grant applications to continue the work in the area. For more information about the project please see www.crimelinkage.org

Amy has been involved in organising and/or delivering sessions at a number of practitioner focused events in the past two years. Firstly, she co-organised a series of three seminars on “Linking Acquisitive Crime”, funded by the British Psychological Society, in 2015 with Dr Matt Tonkin (University of Leicester) and Professor Ray Bull (University of Derby). These events included talks by representatives from a range of organisations including practitioners from several UK police forces and academic colleagues from Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium. She was also a co-convenor – with Dr Jessica Woodhams (University of Birmingham), Dr Matt Tonkin (University of Leicester), and Dr Jasper van der Kemp (VU Amsterdam) – of a British Academy funded conference entitled “Using behavioural science to target prolific criminals” which was hosted in London on 17-18 October 2016. Amy is also a regular speaker at events. Recent examples include the International Academy of Investigative Psychology conference in New York, USA (May 2016), and the Preventing Sexual Violence conference hosted at Birmingham City University (August 2016). She was also an invited speaker at an workshop on “The role of psychological assessment in the prevention of crime” organised by the European Commission and hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia in Tbilisi, Georgia on 20-21 October 2016.

Amy graduated from her PhD from the University of Leicester in January 2013. Her PhD focused on linking robbery offences using crime scene behaviour with several of the studies published in peer review journals including Psychology, Crime, & Law, and the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. She has held several research roles previously including at the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science (University College London) and Perpetuity Research (a commercial company specialising in security research). She has worked on a range of topics in these roles including violence in the night-time economy, gangs, tyre slashing, burglary reduction, evaluations of alcohol treatment services, and the legal frameworks around drug testing at the roadside. If you are interested in her work, please do contact her on ac4705@coventry.ac.uk

crime linkage; behavioural investigative advice; robbery; violent crime; violence in the night time economy; alcohol related violence; burglary; missing people and dementia