Professor Lawrence Sherman is Emeritus Wolfson Professor of Criminology.  He earned his PhD from Yale University, and has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Stockholm and Denison University.

His research interests are in the fields of crime prevention, evidence-based policy, restorative justice, police practices and experimental criminology.  He has conducted field experiments, for example, on finding more effective ways to reduce homicide, gun violence, domestic violence, robbery, burglary, and other crime problems, in collaboration with such agencies as the Metropolitan, Northumbria and Thames Valley Police, London’s Crown Courts, HM Prisons, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales, and the National Probation Service, as well as 30 US police agencies and the Australian Federal Police.

Professor Sherman has served as president of the American Society of Criminology, the International Society of Criminology, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Academy of Experimental Criminology.  He has worked on several projects of the (US) National Academy of Sciences, and as a consultant to the FBI, the (UK) Home Office and Youth Justice Board, the Swedish Ministry of Justice, the (US) National Institute of Justice, the New York City Police Department, the National Police Agency of Japan, the Korean Institute of Criminology, the Justice Ministry of Lower Saxony, and many other agencies.

The author, co-author or editor of 9 books and over 100 book chapters and journal articles, Professor Sherman has received the American Society of Criminology's Edwin Sutherland Award; the Academy of Experimental Criminology’s Joan McCord Award; the American Sociological Association's Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Crime, Law and Deviance; the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Bruce Smith Jr. Award; and the Campbell Collaboration's Robert Boruch Award.  Professor Sherman has also received the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Royal Society for the Arts in London and is the founding co-chair of the International Jury for the Stockholm Prize in Criminology.

Dr Heather Strang is Director of the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology at the Institute of Criminology and was previously Director of the Police Executive Programme.  Internationally recognized for her British and Australian experiments in police-led restorative justice conferences, she was Director of the Centre for Restorative Justice at the Australian National University, where she gained her PhD in Criminology.  Prior to that she was Executive Research Officer at the Australian Institute of Criminology, where she founded the Australian national reporting system for homicide after serving on the research staff of the Australian National Committee on Violence.  Her research interests include the effects of crime and justice on victims of crime, the diversion of cases from prosecution to alternative disposals, restorative justice conferences as both a supplement to and diversion from prosecution, police responses to domestic violence, and the management of randomized controlled experiments in criminology.  Elected a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology in 2002, she was a member of the Scientific Commission of the International Society of Criminology from 2006 to 2012.  In recent years she has been invited to lecture on her research by universities, learned societies and governments in Japan, Colombia, Norway, Uruguay, Sweden, USA, Turkey, Israel, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium and Spain.  In 2019 she was elected President of the Academy of Experimental Criminology.

Dr Barak Ariel is a Reader in Experimental Criminology and a Fellow of the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology.  He has been teaching and supervising students on the Police Executive Course since 2009.  Dr Ariel is involved in evaluation research projects with a large number of criminal justice agencies around the world.  He is the Chair of the Division of Experimental Criminology and an Executive Board Member of the Division of Policing of the American Society of Criminology; and also the Chair of the Institute of Criminology's Ethics Committee.  Professor Ariel has published more than 100 papers in leading journals, on various topics, including body worn videos (BWCs), crime hotspot, police legitimacy, counterterrorism, deterrence and technology in policing.

Sir Denis O’Connor C.B.E QPM is a lecturer and advisor at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University and College Research Associate at Wolfson College.  He is an Independent Non-Executive Director of the Board of the College of Policing.  He was Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary between 2009-12.  Prior to joining the Inspectorate in 2004, he was Chief Constable of Surrey between 2000 and 2004 where he led the piloting of the National Reassurance Policing Programme, the pre-cursor to Neighborhood Policing.

At the Inspectorate his team provided support to the Olympics Programme in testing the Olympic assurance process.  He introduced Value for Money profiles for all police forces in England and Wales in 2008/9 to assist comparisons to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness during austerity.  This was followed by a series of studies to track police availability (2010) and the preparedness of police forces and authorities for the austerity spending period (2011, 2012); police relationships with the media and other parties (2011).  He also contributed to the Scarman Inquiry (1981, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999), and the Leveson Inquiry (2012).  He received the Queens Police Medal for distinguished service in 1996, CBE in 2002, and knighted in 2010.

Sir Denis has a Bachelor’s degree in Education from Southampton University and an MSc in Social Policy from the Cranfield Institute of Technology.   In 2011 he was awarded a place in George Mason University’s ‘Evidence-Based Policing Hall of Fame’.  He received an Honorary Doctorate in Laws from Wolverhampton University in 2012.

Suzette Davenport QPM served for over 31 years in policing in five different forces.  Her service started with West Mercia Police and she retired as the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire in 2017.  In addition to her force roles Suzette was the police lead for Roads Policing during which time she established transparent and accountable governance arrangements for the National Driver Re-offending Scheme.  She remains the chair of the wholly owned stranding subsidiary, UKROEd as a non-executive director, qualifying as a Chartered Director in 2017.  She is a Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for Evidenced-Based Policing and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Gloucestershire. She holds an MBA.

Debbie Simpson QPM began her career in Bedfordshire Police in 1984 where she remained for the next 24 years working predominantly within the detective arena.  She transferred to Devon and Cornwall as Assistant Chief Constable for Crime and Operations before transferring to Dorset.  In 2012 she became Chief Constable until retiring in 2018.  Within Dorset, she led an ambitious collaboration programme alongside local and regional approaches to austerity, whilst building capability within the region as the Chief Constable lead for serious and organised crime.  Debbie worked to transform how forensic services were provided across law enforcement; she also led the UK approach to Disaster Victim Identification for ten years and was responsible for overseeing many international deployments.  Debbie was a Co-Director for SPNAC, fast-track and direct entry and was also the Director for the Strategic Command Course for her final two years of service.  She holds an MBA and is an alumna of Wolfson College having attended the Wolfson Course in 1999.

Chris Sims O.B.E. QPM began his career in the Metropolitan Police in 1980 and was Chief Constable of Staffordshire Police before retiring as Chief Constable of West Midlands Police in 2016.  He led work in the fields of forensic science, counter terrorism and the national response to austerity.  At the West Midlands Police he constructed a transformation programme to reset policing delivery and introduce new technology that involved a unique relationship with the private sector.  He is currently Policing Advisor to the Home Office Biometrics Programme with a particular interest in Facial Recognition.  In 2013 he was awarded the Peel Medal for his contribution to evidence based policing.  He is a graduate of St Peters College Oxford and holds an MBA from Warwickshire University.

Crispian Strachan C.B.E. QPM, DL studied law at Oxford University and Criminology at Sheffield University (MA).  He served in the Metropolitan Police from 1972 until 1993, undertaking a wide range of operational duties as well as Royalty and Diplomatic Protection, hostage negotiation and secondments to the National Audit Office and the internal force inspectorate.  He was Assistant Chief Constable in Strathclyde Police until 1998, mainly responsible for community relations and complaints against the police. He was Chief Constable of Northumbria Police from 1998-2005, when he retired.  He held two national police portfolios, for Research and Development and for the Constitutional and Legal Definition of the (Chief) Constable.  He is also currently a non-executive director of Restorative Solutions CIC, a not-for-profit company.

Dr Jacqueline Sebire is the Assistant Chief Constable for Joint Protective Services for Bedfordshire Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.  She oversees specialist operations, major crime and forensic services across the three counties.  The majority of her service was as a detective in homicide and serious crime investigations in the Metropolitan Police.  She was the senior investigating officer for a number of high profile cases including the ‘Spy in the bag’ case and the conviction of Britain’s youngest hit man.

Jacqueline has a PhD in Forensic Psychology and has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge since 2016.  She has published a number of articles in relation to domestic abuse and risk management and lectured nationally and internationally on her research.  She is a member of the European Union Cooperation in Science and Technology Working Group on Femicide prevention. She has also advised the Police Service of Trinidad and Tobago on best practice in Homicide Investigation.  In March 2019/2021 was invited to speak at the United Nations, New York, Commission on the Status of Women regarding community cohesion and women’s access to justice.

Jacqueline is the National Police Chief’s Council Serious Violence Co-ordinator and has worked extensively with the Government regarding legislation change, funding and multiagency prevention strategies.  Her primary focus has been the provision of support and opportunity for young people. Jacqueline has extensive media experience.  She has been a co-host of the TV series “Born to Kill; A Class of Their Own” and is the Bedfordshire Police lead for Garden Productions’ “24 hours in Police Custody” series.

David Shaw QPM was a police officer for 36 years starting in West Midlands Police.  He served in a wide variety of roles culminating in the rank of Assistant Chief Constable responsible for Crime and Counter Terrorism.  In 2008 he transferred to West Mercia Police as Deputy Chief Constable and concluded his police service after 5 years as Chief Constable.

David held two national policing roles: Conflict Management which included public order, police use of firearms, non-lethal weapons, mounted, dogs and police use of force and was the lead for Fingerprints and Forensic Databases.  He now acts as a consultant to the Home Office supporting police technology programmes and innovation and is an Associate of CityForum which specialises in public policy and in particular policing, justice and security.  These roles enables him to remain very current and complement his role as a Cambridge MSt supervisor.

Dr Sara Valdebenito joined the Mst academic team at Cambridge in 2021. Her research focuses on quantitative studies to understand the drivers, consequences and effective interventions to reduce violence in different social contexts such as the family, schools and communities in the UK and other developing countries. A second area of focus is on algorithmic risk assessment of violent behaviour. She have tested machine learning algorithms for predicting reoffending among UK and United States probationers.
 
In addition to supervising Mst students, she is the Director of forecasting studies at the Cambridge Centre for Evidence Policing. Currently, Dr Valdebenito works for UK police agencies in identifying risk factors for police misconduct that will shortly be part of preventive algorithmic risk assessments.

Dr Vincent Harinam completed his BA and MA at the University of Toronto, and his PhD at the University of Cambridge.  He currently works as a data scientist and law enforcement consultant.  Vincent’s current research interests lie predominantly in cybercrime, computational criminology, and statistical modelling; however, he often dabbles in spatial crime analysis, organized crime, and complex networks.