Dr Sara Valdebenito

Sara was appointed as an Associate Professor in Applied Criminology and Police Management on the Police Executive Programme in March 2023.

Sara came to Cambridge in 2011 to complete the MPhil in Criminological Research program at the Institute of Criminology. In September 2012 she was awarded the MPhil degree (with distinction) for her dissertation entitled: “The association of school bullying with drug use and weapon carrying, a systematic review and meta-analysis of cross-sectional studies.”

She was awarded her PhD in July 2018. She was supervised by Professor Manuel Eisner, Director of the Violence Research Centre. Her doctoral thesis focused on the evaluation of an intervention aimed at reducing school exclusions by utilising a randomised controlled trial design. Sara has been working with the Centre since 2017 and was promoted to Research Associate in 2018. She has been teaching at the University of Cambridge as Associate Lecturer since 2015.

Before joining Cambridge University, Sara worked for the Chilean government, where she took part in the design and implementation of the new policy for the Juvenile Justice System (20.084 Act). This policy addressed the special needs and circumstances of young people, between the ages of 14 and 18, who commit crime. She is still associated with Alberto Hurtado University, where she held a position of lecturer in the School of Social Sciences.