Founding Members
Members involved with C-LINK’s initial research projects
Jessica Woodhams
Professor Woodhams previously worked as a crime analyst for the Metropolitan Police in London. From there she moved into academia, taking on lecturing roles first at the University of Leicester, then the University of Gloucestershire and is now a Professor in Forensic Psychology at the University of Birmingham. She is also the Director of the Centre of Applied Psychology at the University of Birmingham, as well as a Co-Director of the University’s Centre for Crime, Justice and Policing. Professor Woodhams is also a chartered psychologist and an HCPC registered forensic psychologist, and has been involved in case work and consultancy including advising on high profile cases for the Metropolitan Police and the Scottish Crown Office and advising international police forces on their crime linkage capabilities. Professor Woodhams routinely conducts operational research and has worked with a wide range of policing agencies including the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands Police, Greater Manchester Police, the National Crime Agency, the Home Office, and the South African Police Service. Her research interests centre around investigative psychology – including crime linkage, offender prioritisation and offender profiling – and sexual and serial offending.
Professor Woodhams led on the development of the Crime Linkage International NetworK (C-LINK). She supervises the Network Facilitator and has been instigative in completing the research projects conducted by the C-LINK group. Specifically, she was part of the team coding data in South Africa and worked with network members to conduct the statistical analyses. She worked with the Network Facilitator to organise and deliver three workshops for network members over the two year project, and is the lead author on an article recently submitted for publication, investigating the implications of including one-off and unsolved offences in crime linkage samples.
Professor Woodhams is currently engaged in research examining the investigative potential of Automatic Number Plate Recognition data for serial crime in the UK, as well as supervising a number of upcoming projects funded by the Institute for Global Innovation at the University of Birmingham.
Matthew Tonkin
Dr. Tonkin is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Leicester, having previously worked in the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder Unit at Rampton Hospital and as a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology at Birmingham City University. Dr. Tonkin’s research focuses on developing scientific techniques that can be used to conduct behavioural crime linkage. Specifically he has completed research on behavioural, geographical and temporal methods of linking serial burglaries, robberies, car thefts and sexual offences. Other research interests include offender profiling, geographical profiling and the social climate of prisons and secure forensic psychiatric hospitals. Dr. Tonkin has published research papers in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals including Forensic Science International, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and Legal and Criminological Psychology.bjects of crime linkage and profiling at an undergraduate and postgraduate level. She currently works as a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, and as a Senior Teaching Fellow and Research Fellow at University College London.
Amy Burrell
Dr. Burrell has worked as a Research Fellow for the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London, a researcher for Perpetuity Research & Consultancy International based in Leicester, and a Training Manager at Perpetuity Training. She has an undergraduate degree in Applied Psychology (Durham), an MSc in Forensic Behavioural Science (Liverpool) and a PhD in Psychology (Leicester). Her PhD focused on linking serial robbery offences.
Dr. Burrell was the Network Facilitator for the Crime Linkage International NetworK between May 2013 and September 2014. She was responsible for coordinating the activities of the network, including keeping network members updated on network activities, delivering workshops and collecting and cleaning datasets. She was replaced in the Network Facilitator role by Leah Ashmore-Hills part way through the project when she took up a new role at Birmingham City University. Dr. Burrell also taught at Coventry University before moving back to University of Birmingham as a Research Fellow. She continues to work with C-LINK partners.
Craig Bennell
Dr. Bennell is the Director of the Police Research Lab at Carleton University, Canada. Dr. Bennell holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Alberta (Canada), and an MSc and PhD from the University of Liverpool (UK). He is a Professor in the Department of Psychology, a previous President of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, and a previous Editor of the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology. He currently sits on the editorial board of 5 peer-reviewed forensic/police psychology journals, and has co-authored two psychology textbooks. His primary areas of research are the reliability, validity and/or utility of psychologically-based investigative techniques (e.g. offender profiling and crime linkage), use-of-force decision making and training, and evidence-based policing. Dr. Bennell is an experienced crime linkage researcher and is a pioneer in the development of crime linkage techniques. Together with Professor Jessica Woodhams, he co-edited the book, Crime Linkage: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Dr. Bennell’s responsibilities in relation to the C-LINK project include the collection of data from the Canadian police organisations, data analysis (in particular receiver operating characteristic analysis), and participation in the workshops. Dr. Bennell will also support the dissemination of the research findings, and will be involved in planning the future of the network.
Tom Pakkanen
Tom Pakkanen is a practitioner-researcher. He is an experienced clinical forensic psychologist with a PhD in behavioural crime linkage from Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. He has years of experience working full time assisting the police and the judicial system, mainly in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, with forensic investigations of suspected child sexual and physical abuse. Tom also has years of clinical experience in the assessment and treatment of forensic psychiatric patients and severe psychoses. He has been training police at the Police College of Finland for a decade, and is a sought-after lecturer on topics of applied forensic psychology. His professional interests include crime linkage, criminal profiling, decision-making processes, investigative interviewing, risk- and threat assessment, and the application of forensic psychology in pre-trial investigations and in the court room.
Dr Pakkanen will work with Dr Santtila to identify and access relevant data from Finland for the research projects. He will also be involved in conducting data analysis, participating in the workshops, and disseminating the research findings.
Jasper van der Kemp
Dr van der Kemp is an Assistant Professor at the VU School of Criminology in the Faculty of Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA). He has an MSc in Neuropsychology (VUA). His PhD research, at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, is on geographical profiling. Dr van der Kemp’s research focuses on investigative criminology, in particular the psychological aspects of investigations and prosecutions. His expertise is varied, including legal psychology, crime analysis, crime scenarios, and behavioural investigative advice (e.g. offender and geographical profiling and crime linkage).
Dr van der Kemp will work with police partners to source and collate crime data for the C-LINK project. Dr van der Kemp will contribute to the data analysis, specifically in relation to analysing spatial distribution and conducting Bayesian analyses. As with other members of the network, he will contribute to workshops, promote C-LINK activities with relevant organisations, and help disseminate the research findings
Gabrielle Salfati
Professor Gabrielle Salfati
United States of America
Professor Salfati is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, and the Director of the Investigative Psychology Research Unit (IPRU). She is part of the first group of people who emerged within the field of Investigative Psychology, and was instrumental in the development of empirical analysis of violent crime behaviour as an international research field. She has an undergraduate degree in Psychology (Nottingham), an MSc in Investigative Psychology (Surrey), and a PhD in Psychology (Liverpool). She is a Fellow of the International Association for Investigative Psychology, and the former Vice-President of the Homicide Research Working Group. Her expertise includes behavioural crime scene analysis, linking serial homicide and sexual violent crimes, and crime scene investigation decision making.
She is an expert in data collection methods and quality assurance, and has developed the Homicide Profiling Index (HPI-R) a detailed coding book for collecting behavioural data from crime scenes that has been used extensively in collecting data from homicide files as well as sexual crime files. She is also an expert in multi-dimensional scaling analysis as it applies to crime scene analysis research and practice.
Professor Salfati regularly collaborates with major research centres and law enforcement agencies internationally and has compiled some of the largest serial homicide datasets to date based on actual crime files. She delivers training to law enforcement, crime analysts and other criminal justice professionals on matters of crime scene analysis and investigations, and decision making.
Gérard Labuschagne
Dr Gérard Labuschagne
South Africa
Dr. Gérard Labuschagne is the Director of L& S Threat Management; a private consultancy company specialising in threat assessment and management. He also acts as an expert witness in criminal cases. He was previously the Section Head of the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) Investigative Psychology Section (IPS); a specialist department responsible for assisting SAPS with investigations of psychologically motivated crimes such as serial sex offences. He is a clinical psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa and a criminologist with the Criminological Society of Southern Africa, and an Advocate of the High Court (non-practicing), in South Africa an Advocate is the equivalent of a Barrister. He has assisted in the investigation of over 110 serial murderers and over 200 serial rapists and has testified over 100 times in the High Court and magistrates courts of South Africa. Dr. Labuschagne has an undergraduate degree in Psychology, two Masters degrees (Clinical Psychology and Criminology), and a PhD in Psychology, and an LLB Bachelors of Laws degree. He has published more than 20 peer-review publications and chapters and is on the editorial board for several journals. He is a consultant to the National Institute of Justice of the Department of Justice in the USA. He was previously a Professor Extraordinarius at the Departments of Police Practice, and Criminology at the University of South Africa, and is currently an Honorary Associate Professor of the Division of Forensic Medicine and Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a fellow of the International Academy of Investigative Psychology, a member of the British Psychological Society, and a member of the International Homicide Investigators Association.
Dr. Labuschagne has extensive experience of the investigation of serial sexual crime and of conducting case linkage based on modus operandi often testifying about case linkage in court. He also has experience of identifying staging of crime scenes, and other investigative techniques and processes.
Pekka Santtila
Professor Pekka Santtila
Finland & China
Professor Santtila is Professor of Psychology, NYU Shanghai; Global Network Professor, NYU. Previously, he was Professor of Applied Psychology and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Psychology and Theology at the Åbo Akademi University in Finland. His research is focused on legal and forensic psychology with a particular interest in investigative issues and forensic sexology. His current research projects focus on improving the quality of forensic interviews with children and establishing the maximum distance and minimum lighting conditions during a crime event that allow a later correct identification by a witness. He is also interested in the effects of abuse experiences and how decisions are made in abuse investigations. Finally, he has done work on behavior genetics and is involved in a research project where the behavioral effects of intragenomic conflict are investigated. Professor Santtila has provided investigative advice to the police, acted as an expert witness in numerous legal cases and consulted child sexual abuse investigations. He is a licensed psychologist and specialist in legal psychology (Finland).
Jan Winter
Jan Winter
The Netherlands
Mr Winter is a Behavioural Investigative Advisor (BIA)/ Investigative Psychologist with the Dutch National Police. He advises predominantly on violent and sexual offending, and stalking. He is a PhD Candidate with the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium. He already holds an MSc in Clinical Psychology (VUB), an MSc in Investigative Psychology (Liverpool), and a postgraduate diploma in Investigative Psychology (Rino, The Netherlands).
Mr Winter’s PhD is focusing on sequential analysis of the offender-victim interaction in violent sexual assault and the influence of situational variables on the offender’s behaviour. He brings unique experience of applying proximity coefficients and non-parametric Item Response Theory to crime linkage research. As a Behavioural Investigative Advisor, he strives to provide both an academic and practitioner viewpoint when contextualising the research findings. This also means he is well placed to promote network activities and disseminate research findings to relevant practitioners in the field.
Associate Members
Nadine Deslauriers-Varin
Dr Nadine Deslauriers-Varin
Université Laval, Canada
Dr. Nadine Deslauriers-Varin is an Associate professor of Criminology at the School of Social work and Criminology at Université Laval, Quebec, Canada. She received her BSc and MSc in Criminology from University of Montreal (QC, Canada) and she completed her PhD at the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University (BC, Canada) in 2014 under the supervision of Dr. Eric Beauregard. Her PhD research project was supported by the prestigious Vanier Canada scholarship and looked at the environmental consistency displayed by serial sex offenders for crime linkage purposes. She is an affiliated with the International Center of Comparative Criminology (ICCC) – for which she also acts as the head of the ICCC – Université Laval division-, and a collaborator for the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing. She is also the Director of the Criminology bachelor and certificate programs at Université Laval.
Nadine’s research has been funded, among others, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et culture, and the Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General through the British Columbia’s Crime Reduction Research Program. Most of her research projects are carried out in collaboration with local, provincial or federal police forces and aim at developing better investigative practices (e.g., suspect identification and prioritization for serial sexual and violent crimes and police interrogation practices) and better prevent sexual and violent crimes (situational crime prevention). Her work has been published in top tier peer-reviewed journals in her field and has been the subject of many scientific papers, book chapters, and presentations. She is currently acting as the guest editor for two special issues related to police investigations (Criminologie; Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology) and is working on a book on investigative techniques and operational challenges associated with criminal investigations of sexual offenses (with co-editor Dr. Craig Bennell) to be published by Springer early 2021.
Bryanna Fox
Bryanna Fox
University of South Florida, United States of America
Bryanna Fox is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida (USF), and Faculty Affiliate in the Florida Mental Health Institute. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge and is a former FBI Special Agent. Her main research interests include evidence-based policing and crime prevention, developmental and life-course criminology, forensic psychology and prolific offenders. She has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in top tier outlets to include: Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice & Behavior, Justice Quarterly, Law & Society Review, and Psychological Bulletin.
She is current Co-Editor of the Justice Quarterly and a member of Editorial Boards for journals including Criminology & Public Policy, Criminal Justice & Behavior, Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice, Policing: An International Journal and the Journal of Criminal Justice. She is lead author of the 2020 book Evidence-Based Offender Profiling (Routledge), and her research has received over $2.3 million in federal and private funding. She is current Director and Founder of the SPRUCE Research Lab at USF, on the Executive Board of the American Society of Criminology (ASC)’s Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (DLC), and recipient of the 2017 Early Career Award from the ASC Division of DLC, 2019 USF Outstanding Research Achievement Award, and the 2014 Excellence in Law Enforcement Research Award from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Michael Porter
Dr Michael Porter
University of Virginia, United States of America
Dr. Porter is an Associate Professor in Data Science and Systems Engineering at the University of Virginia. His research in the area of crime linkage involves the use of statistical and machine learning techniques to discover and model linkages in large disparate data. This has resulted in publications in Legal and Criminological Psychology, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A), The American Statistician, and the R package crimelinkage. Dr. Porter’s other research areas include event prediction and forecasting and pattern/event/anomaly detection.
Shumpei Haginoya
Dr Shumpei Haginoya
NYU Shanghai, China
Dr. Haginoya is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Psychology, NYU Shanghai. He previously worked as a psychologist for Tochigi Prefectural Police Headquarters in Japan. His research focuses on building a structured method of crime linkage aiming to develop a crime linkage support system. Other research projects include child sexual abuse interviewing training, polygraph test (concealed information test), and offender and geographic profiling. He has provided advice to the police about investigations and child sexual abuse interviewing training. Dr. Haginoya and his colleagues have also developed a geographic profiling software for practical use. Its trial version is available here