Tammi Walker

Tammi is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law at Teesside University. She is a Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society, Registered Senior Fellow with Advance HE and a mental health nurse by clinical background. Tammi has visiting positions at the Universities of Durham and Manchester.

She has completed work as a psychologist for over 10 years and has an advanced level of knowledge in forensic psychology. Tammi has contributed extensively to the development and delivery of interventions with imprisoned women in general and in particular she has considerable expertise in the areas of suicide and self injury.

Recently, she was the lead author of a book, with Professor Graham Towl, on the prevention of suicide and self injury amongst women prisoners. Tammi is an invited member for the advisory group for the 'Suicide Prevention in Prisons' with The Howard League for Penal Reform and the Centre for Mental Health and an invited member of the Oversight Group for HMP Newhall's Rivendell Service for imprisoned women with personality disorder.

She is also a member of the Practitioner and Stakeholder Group (NOMS), which supports the work of the Independent Advisory Panel (IAP) on Deaths in Custody, Trustee and a member of the management and leadership for the Counselling in Prisons Network, a member of the Offender Health Research Network (OHRN) and Prison and Offender Research in Social Care and Health Network (PORSCH).

Prior to returning to academia she worked with a Forensic Psychology team in a maximum-security establishment for male prisoners and Forensic Mental Health team in NHS secure services for female offenders.

She is passionate about working with marginalised and vulnerable groups, particularly women. A key area of the work is supporting women and young people to promote physical health, mental health issues and wellbeing. She has established links and now works closely with the Howard League of Penal Reform that is a charity that aims to increase awareness of self-injury issues in women and young people who have offending histories.

A key area of her work is to combat the negative connotations associated with self-injury behaviour. In addition to her interest of self-injury in the criminal justice system she offers support and training to teachers encountering young people who self-injure. This work is key in schools to help them promote health and wellbeing and develop resources to foster resilience.