Senior Practitioner Fellows (SPFs)

Senior Practitioner Fellows are police officers or staff, on secondment to a research team at the Centre for three to six months. Fellows are appointed through a person specification and interview.

They are recruited to identified projects and contribute to research design, data collection, analysis and writing up practitioner and academic publications. The approach derives from the commitment to co-research, drawing on the insights from police and academics working together.

The Centre has had ten Senior Practitioner Fellows to date, working on rural crime, leadership and public value; Q methodology and public value; child witness interviewing simulation; demand management; and working with informants.

The value for the secondee is working inside a university, and learning more about how research is designed and carried out. This improves the evidence-based practice skills of the Fellow, which they can take back into their organisation. For the academics, the research is more fully grounded in policing practices.