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

Book

Burrell, A 2022, Robbery: The tipping point between theft and violence. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93173-5

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 . Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 394-411.

Woodhams, J, Tonkin, MJ & Burrell, A 2024, Offender profiling and crime linkage. in G Davies, AR Beech & M Collioff (eds), Forensic Psychology: Crime, Justice, Law, Interventions. 4th edn, Wiley, pp. 313-336.

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, J, 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.

Burrell, A, Evans, E & Nokes, K 2022, A synthesis of evidence on early intervention from three programme evaluations: Trusted adult workers, family safety plans and Think Family Early Intervention: Vulnerability and Violent Crime Programme. College of Policing. <https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-public/2022-06/Synthesis-of-evidence-from-three-programme-evaluations.pdf>

Conference contribution

Alrajeh, D, Nowack, V, Benjamin, P, Thomas, K, Hobson, W, Gutierrez Munoz, 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, FA & Lee, M 2025, Data-dependent goal modelling for ML-enabled law enforcement systems. in Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2026 IEEE/ACM 48th International Conference on Software Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 12/04/26.

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

Poster

Zhan, Y, Ahmed, F, Burrell, A, Tonkin, MJ, Galambos, S, Woodhams, J & Alrajeh, D 2025, 'Enhancing Binary Encoded Crime Linkage Analysis Using Siamese Network', 40th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Singapore, Singapore, 20/01/26 - 27/01/26. <http://10.48550/arXiv.2511.07651>

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