Dr Mira Yaneva, is a Lecturer in Forensic Psychology and a Course Director for the MSc Forensic Psychology course. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. She joined Coventry University in 2020 as a Lecturer.

Dr Yaneva obtained a first class undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria in 2012. In 2013 she completed her MSc in Investigative Psychology with distinction at the University of Huddersfield. Her dissertation included a narrative-based approach to Contract Killing focusing on the psychological bases of behavioural variation amongst contract killers. Her PhD research pioneered an empirical approach to evaluating Human Kindness and establishing a new trait that is the polar opposite of Psychopathy. Dr Yaneva's research has implications for a number of disciplines, including Personality, Forensic and Positive Psychology. 

• Forensic, Investigative and Positive Psychology; 

• Individual offender characteristics (i.e. personality and crime, character strengths and crime; mental illness and crime; individual differences in offenders); 

• Modelling of offender types and styles; 

• Offender rehabilitation (i.e. strength-based approaches; strength-based programmes and interventions; effectiveness of current programmes); 

• Risk assessment and protective factors

• Development and validation of new instruments;

• Contract killers, instigators/solicitors of crime, victims of murder-for-hire plots