Dr Amy Burrell BSc, MSc, FHEA, PhD

School of Psychology
Research Fellow

Contact details

Email: a.burrell@bham.ac.uk

Amy is a researcher with a background in forensic psychology. She works on multiple research projects at the University of Birmingham, predominantly focused on topics such as sexual violence, behavioural crime linkage, and policing.

Qualifications

PhD Forensic Psychology (University of Leicester)
MSc Forensic Behavioural Science (University of Liverpool)
BSc Applied Psychology (University of Durham)
Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Birmingham City University)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Equality and Diversity (Leicester College)

Biography

Dr Amy Burrell has been researching in crime and policing for over 15 years. She graduated from University of Durham with a degree in Applied Psychology in 2002 before going onto complete an MSc in Forensic Behavioural Science at University of Liverpool the following year. After 4 years working as a Research Fellow for the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science she returned to education to complete a PhD (part time) in Forensic Psychology at the University of Leicester. Her PhD was on behavioural crime linkage (i.e. a method for identifying whether you can identify series of offences committed by the same person based on their crime scene actions) in personal robbery. After completing her PhD in 2013, Amy moved to the University of Birmingham to become the Network Facilitator for the Crime Linkage International Network (C-LINK) (www. crimelinkage.org). She then moved to teaching roles for 6 years – Lecturer in Forensic Psychology at Birmingham City University and Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Forensic Psychology at Coventry University – before returning to research in January 2021. She is a Research Fellow at University of Birmingham predominantly working on projects related to sexual violence, spiking, and policing.

Research

Amy’s research interests include property crime – in particular personal robbery, behavioural crime linkage, group offending, group decision-making, and violent crime.

Other activities

Editorial Board Member – Criminal Justice and Behavior
Editorial Board Member – Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling
Editorial Board Member - Journal of Criminal Psychology
External Examiner - MSc Cybercrime, Terrorism and Security, University of Plymouth

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Tonkin, M, Lemeire, J, Woodhams, J, Alrajeh, D, Webb, M, Galambos, S, Smailes, H & Burrell, A 2025, 'Building the Statistical Evidence Base for Crime Linkage Decision-Support Tools with Sexual Offences', Journal of Quantitative Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-025-09622-w

Wüllenweber, S & Burrell, A 2023, 'The crime and the place: Robbery in the night‐time economy', Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. https://doi.org/10.1002/jip.1616

Chapter

Burrell, A & Wuellenweber, S 2025, Robbery. in WC Regoeczi & TD Miethe (eds), Handbook on Violent Crime and Society . 1 edn, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 394-411. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035317868.00034

Woodhams, J, Tonkin, MJ & Burrell, A 2024, Offender profiling and crime linkage. in GM Davies, AR Beech & MF Collioff (eds), Forensic Psychology: Crime, Justice, Law, Interventions. 4th edn, Wiley, pp. 313-336. <https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Forensic+Psychology%3A+Crime%2C+Justice%2C+Law%2C+Interventions%2C+4th+Edition-p-9781119892021>

Comment/debate

Burrell, A, Costello, B, Hobson, W, Morton, R, Muñoz, CG, Thomas, K & Kloess, JA 2023, 'Being prepared for emotionally demanding research', Communications Psychology, vol. 1, no. 1, 9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00008-x

Commissioned report

Bandyopadhyay, S, Chandan, JS, Bradbury-Jones, C, Taylor, J, Montgomery-Marks, P, Evans, E, Burrell, A, Afrin, J, Crowe, F, Martin, J, Ozkan Erciyas, F, Abramovaite, J, Gonzalez Valencia, MT, Wang, Z, Nambiar, J, Burton, A, Baker, J, Kane, E & Karavias, Y 2025, Impact, Process and Economic Evaluation of the WEPROTECT service.

Evans, E, Christie, C, Chandan, J & Burrell, A 2024, The Suffolk Police youth engagement team (YET): Theory of change and feasibility study report. College of Policing. <https://library.college.police.uk/docs/CoP/Suffolk-YET-summary-report-combined-2024.pdf>

Burrell, A, Woodhams, J, Gregory, P & Robinson, E 2023, Spiking: Prevalence and Motivation.

Conference contribution

Alrajeh, D, Nowack, V, Benjamin, P, Thomas, K, Hobson, W, Gutierrez Muñoz, C, Hamilton-Giachritsis, C, Kloess, J, Woodhams, J, Butler, D, Law, M, Morton, R, Costello, B, Burrell, A, Grant, T, Shah, P, Laureano de Leon, F & Lee, M 2026, Data-Dependent Goal modeling for ML-Enabled Law Enforcement Systems. in ICSE-SEIS '26: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 48th International Conference on Software Engineering. International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (Print), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), pp. 224-235, 2026 IEEE/ACM 48th International Conference on Software Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 12/04/26. https://doi.org/10.1145/3786581.3786944

Zhan, Y, Ahmed, F, Burrell, A, Tonkin, M, Galambos, S, Woodhams, J & Alrajeh, D 2026, Enhancing Binary Encoded Crime Linkage Analysis Using Siamese Network. in S Koenig, C Jenkins & ME Taylor (eds), Proceedings of the 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence: AAAI-26 Special Track AI for Social Impact II and Senior Member Presentations. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, no. 46, vol. 40, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, pp. 39576-39584, 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Singapore, Singapore, 20/01/26. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.07651, https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i46.41309

Woodhams, J, Burrell, A, Li, W, Ahmed, F, Tonkin, M, Lemeire, J, Konovalov, A, Frisson, S, Webb, M, Galambos, S, Nowack, V & Alrajeh, D 2026, How Analysts Use AI in High-Stakes Crime Linkage: An Industrial Study. in FSE Companion '26 : Proceedings of the 34th ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering. Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), pp. 817-828, The 34th ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering, Montréal, Quebec, Canada, 5/07/26. https://doi.org/10.1145/3803437.3805253

Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary

Burrell, A, Slater, C & Davies, K 2024, Profiling. in P Caeiro, S Gless, V Mitsilegas, MJ Costa, J De Snaijer & G Theodorakakou (eds), Elgar Encyclopedia of Crime and Criminal Justice. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789902990.profiling

Literature review

Burrell, A, Costello, B & Woodhams, J 2024, 'Methods used to link crimes using behaviour: A literature review', Aggression and Violent Behavior, vol. 79, 102014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2024.102014

Other contribution

Burrell, A, Broyd, J, Davies, K & Hambidge, S 2025, Spiking Motivations: Survey Findings. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.14834.57284

Preprint

Alrajeh, D, Nowack, V, Benjamin, P, Thomas, K, Hobson, W, Muñoz, CG, Hamilton-Giachritsis, C, Kloess, JA, Woodhams, J, Butler, D, Law, M, Morton, R, Costello, B, Burrell, A, Grant, T, Shah, P, de Leon, FL & Lee, M 2026 'Data-Dependent Goal Modeling for ML-Enabled Law Enforcement Systems' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.06237

View all publications in research portal