I joined the School of Law at Queen's in September 2000 having previously worked in the Department of Criminology at Keele University, Staffordshire after finishing my PhD.  My research interests cover a number of areas including policing in Northern Ireland historically, colonial policing, the export of policing models to overseas jurisdictions (e.g. around community policing in particular) and also security sector reform and development on which i co-authored a book with Nathan Pino, Policing, Development and Globalisation: Doing it the Western Way?  I have also conducted crime and victimisation surveys including a victimisation survey of young people's experiences of crime in Northern Ireland and was involved (with Peter Shirlow) in the Greater New Lodge Community Crime Survey which assessed the attitudes of a post-conflict community to the PSNI among other things. 

More recently I have become interested in the policing and regulation of commerical sex and together with Ron Weitzer completed a four-city study funded by the British Academy / Leverhulme Trust in 2014. This study compared the regulation of commerical sex in four cities: Belfast, Manchester, Berlin and Prague.  Currently, I am researching the impact of Northern Ireland's sex purchase legislation for the Department of Justice and the report will be due by Summer 2019.

I am also interested in offending patterns among the military and have recently been given permission by British Army HQ to conduct a study investigating psychosocial maturity among young adult soldiers.