Dr. Maria Ioannou

Dr Maria Ioannou is a Chartered Forensic Psychologist, a Reader in Investigative and Forensic Psychology, Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, Director of the MSc Investigative Psychology, Director of the MSc in Security Science and Deputy Director of the Secure Societies Institute, prior to being Associate Director and Institutional lead for Human Trafficking, Modern Slavery and Sexual Exploitation/Abuse at the University of Huddersfield.  Dr Ioannou has been involved in the assessment of intervention programmes for reducing/preventing crime for a range of different forms of criminality and groups of offenders. Typically, these evaluations have required assessments of change/impact/influence of the interventions on individuals and their criminal behaviour as well as assessments of the overall programme itself. She has delivered a variety of training courses to professionals (i.e. law enforcement personnel, teachers, youth workers) as well as applied research, case reports and consultancy projects to police, government authorities, intervention agencies and other public bodies (i.e. Safer Merseyside Partnership, Merseyside Police, Liverpool City Council, Lancashire Constabulary, the Ministry of Defence, Irish Prison Service, Irish Police Force). She has also contributed to various legal cases and her work has been presented at conferences nationally and internationally. She was recently invited to train Victim Advocates and Sexual Assault Response Coordinators for the USA Air Force on Violence and Sexual Assault for which she was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation. She has extensive media experience across all platforms appearing recently on CNN and BBC radio and is a member of the School Research Ethics Panel at the University of Huddersfield. Dr Ioannou recently provided consultation with her colleague Dr Synnott on the development of a Risk Assessment Tool for Domestic Violence for the Irish Police Force and Department of Justice Ireland and has consulted on similar Domestic Violence Risk Assessment Scales for a police force in the UK. She currently works on and supervises a number of projects that examine factors associated with vulnerability both in terms of victimisation and perpetration, as well as developing risk assessments, for a variety of crime types including domestic violence, child sexual exploitation, human trafficking as well as missing persons. Dr Ioannou recently delivered keynote presentations, with her college Dr Synnott, in Baghdad Iraq on the contributions of Investigative Psychology Research.  Dr Ioannou, again with her colleague Dr Synnott, recently delivered a number of keynote presentations to the Royal Thai Police in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai Thailand in December 2018. She is currently leading a project with her colleague Dr Synnott funded by Merseyside Police on the non-consensual distribution of imagery amongst adolescents and recently completed with her colleagues at Huddersfield a funded rapid evidence assessment for the Home Offices, Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Dr Ioannou recently just finished a funded evaluation of Domestic Abuse Fast Tracking in the courts, with her colleague Dr Synnott.