Menu Close

Michelle McManus

Professor of Safeguarding and Violence Prevention, Manchester Metropolitan University

Professor of Safeguarding and Violence Prevention. Expertise in safeguarding, multi-agency working, domestic abuse, exploitation, particularly county lines.

Previous Head of Criminal Justice at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) within the School of Justice Studies. Michelle has led on a number of projects since her return to academia in October 2019, recent highlights include:
- National County Lines Programme evaluation
- National all-Wales 'Shaping the Future of Safeguarding in Wales'
- Evaluation of Operation Provide: Police and IDVA co-responder model. Identified as best practice by the College of Policing and NPCC and included within their Homicide Prevention Framework.
- Evaluation of Operation Yardbird, Thames Valley Police.
- Home Office commissioned work on Domestic Abuse Perpetrators.
- Working with the National Crime Agency on a number of projects over the last 10 years involving sexual offending and serious violence.

Previously the National Research Lead for Public Health and Policing at Public Health Wales, leading the research and evaluation of the Home Office £6.7million funded Police Transformation Project Early Action Together (Police and Partners ACEs programme).

Before this, Michelle was a Senior lecturer at UCLan within the Policing team and also seconded to Lancashire constabulary for 2 years as the academic lead for their Evidence Based Policing Research Hub.

Michelle's doctoral research (completed in 2012) explored risk factors for contact child sexual abuse within a sample of those engaging in indecent images of children. In addition to the research’s intellectual appeal, it is policy relevant in that it helped to generate evidence based decision tools for police intelligence assessment. Her doctoral research assisted with the creation of KIRAT (Kent Internet Risk Assessment Tool), a risk management tool for individuals accessing indecent images of children. KIRAT was recently reported within CEOP’s thematic assessment (2012) as “the most rigorously tested assessment tool currently available” (p.11). This tool has been accredited by ACPO to be used by all Police Forces within the UK, and has since then been extended to European and international use.

Michelle has led and been involved with various research projects with national agencies and Constabularies since 2009, including the National Crime Agency, College of Policing, Homicide Working Group, CEOP, Public Health and third sector organisations. This work tends to focus on areas of risk and high demand, with outcomes influencing policy and practice. She lectures nationally and internationally on these topics and has published on various areas of criminal justice. She was a Justice of the Peace from 2007 to 2017.

Experience

  • 2019–present
    Subject Head in Criminal Justice, LJMU

Education

  • 2012 
    University of Liverpool, PhD