Professor Jessica Woodhams
C-LINK Founder (United Kingdom)
Professor Woodhams previously worked as a crime analyst for the Metropolitan Police in London. From there she moved into academia, taking on lecturing roles first at the University of Leicester, then the University of Gloucestershire and is now a Professor in Forensic Psychology at the University of Birmingham. She is also the Director of the Centre of Applied Psychology at the University of Birmingham, as well as a Co-Director of the University’s Centre for Crime, Justice and Policing. Professor Woodhams is also a chartered psychologist and an HCPC registered forensic psychologist, and has been involved in case work and consultancy including advising on high profile cases for the Metropolitan Police and the Scottish Crown Office and advising international police forces on their crime linkage capabilities. Professor Woodhams routinely conducts operational research and has worked with a wide range of policing agencies including the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands Police, Greater Manchester Police, the National Crime Agency, the Home Office, and the South African Police Service. Her research interests centre around investigative psychology – including crime linkage, offender prioritisation and offender profiling – and sexual and serial offending.
Professor Woodhams led on the development of the Crime Linkage International NetworK (C-LINK). She supervises the Network Facilitator and has been instigative in completing the research projects conducted by the C-LINK group. Specifically, she was part of the team coding data in South Africa and worked with network members to conduct the statistical analyses. She worked with the Network Facilitator to organise and deliver three workshops for network members over the two year project, and is the lead author on an article recently submitted for publication, investigating the implications of including one-off and unsolved offences in crime linkage samples.
Professor Woodhams is currently engaged in research examining the investigative potential of Automatic Number Plate Recognition data for serial crime in the UK, as well as supervising a number of upcoming projects funded by the Institute for Global Innovation at the University of Birmingham.