People within CCJ

Dr Jonny Byrne

Senior Lecturer

Dr. Jonny Byrne is currently a Lecturer and Year Two Tutor in criminology and criminal justice, in the School of Criminology, Social Policy and Politics at Ulster University. Jonny lectures on issues relating to policing and security, countering violent extremism and psychology within the criminal justice system.

He has completed a number of research projects on public attitudes to peace walls, paramilitary violence, young people’s participation in political violence, community experiences of public order policing in Northern Ireland, bonfires, and the manipulations of commemorations and celebrations in a contested society.

Jonny works closely within a number of organisations including the Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) on areas pertaining to ‘policing with the community, confidence and accountability’. In the previous two years he has been awarded two ESRC Knowledge Exchange awards, were he worked with the British government and the DoJ on supporting policy making through academic research and analysis on issues such as parades, flags, bonfires and physical segregation.

Jonny is also a member of the European Union Radicalisation Awareness Network (Youth, Families and Community Working Group and the Police and Law Enforcement Working Group). Dr. Byrne is a member of the Youth Advisory Group to the Northern Ireland Policing Board. He has also been responsible for two recent reports on radicalisation in Northern Ireland (2016) for the International donor Co-operation Ireland, looking at motivations behind young people’s participation in political violence.

He is currently involved in a Horizon 2020 award exploring soft skills in peacebuilding and is also managing two research projects, looking at the policy around commemorations and identity in a shared society (for the community relations council) and the challenges around implementing a policing with the community strategy in a divided society (for the PSNI).

Dr Una Convery

Lecturer in Criminology

Una joined Ulster University as a Lecturer in criminology in 2003. She completed her undergraduate degree in public administration at the University of Glamorgan and her PhD at Ulster University, and has worked as a Researcher at Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University.

Una’s teaching and research interests include youth justice, imprisonment, families of prisoners, victims of crime, children’s rights and women in the criminal justice system.

She is the Year one Tutor for BSc (Hons) Criminology and Criminal Justice and the National Police University of China (NPUC) students’ Mentor.

Una is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Practice (CHERP) and of the Children of Prisoners Europe (COPE) network.

Dr Brendan Coyle

Senior Lecturer in Criminology

Michael Davidson

Senior Lecturer

Michael Davidson joined the Criminology team at Ulster University as a Lecturer in 2016.

Michael's research and teaching interests are in the areas of law enforcement, terrorism and political violence, counter terrorism, violent extremism and leadership and management.

Michael is highly experienced and has an in-depth knowledge of training design, development and delivery at all levels within law enforcement agencies both locally and internationally.

Michael is currently the Course Director for the BSc (Hons) Criminology and Criminal Justice (Applied Practice) degree designed for current and recently retired members within the Criminal Justice Sector.

Michael is Course Director for the Open Source Intelligence Course (OSINT) and the Deep Dark Web course both delivered online through a collaborative partnership in Ulster University.

Michael is also the Subject Partnership Manager (SPM), for five external programs delivered in partnership within the Criminal Justice Sector.

Michael is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; he teaches at undergraduate level and supervises student dissertations at undergraduate level. Michael has studied Terrorism at St Andrews University and holds a BA in Leadership and Management (with commendation) from Dundee University and has specific expertise in the transfer of learning to workplace application.

Michael has over 30 years’ practical experience of law enforcement in various areas specialising in, the creation of accredited CPD training programs and collaborative partnership working.

Political Activity: None

Dr Julie Harris

Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice

Professor Kristian Lasslett

Professor

Kristian Lasslett is Professor of Criminology at Ulster University and sits on the Executive Board of the International State Crime Initiative. He is joint Editor-in-Chief of State Crime, a leading international peer reviewed journal, and co-founder of the investigative research centre, UzInvestigations. Kristian’s investigative research focuses on criminogenic intersections of state and corporate power, the transnational structures that facilitate elite criminality, and the communities of resistance that emerge in opposition.

This focus has been operationalised through fieldwork on the extractive industries in South-East Asia and Central Asia, in addition to investigative work on grand corruption, kleptocracy, asset recovery, land-grabbing and forced eviction. Kristian has published on a range of subjects in leading international journals and edited collections, including scientific method, state theory, investigative research methodologies, decolonial theory, state-corporate crime, corruption, and forced eviction.

His investigations into corruption and transnational crime have appeared in the BBC, The Guardian, Radio Free Europe, Open Democracy and Tages-Anzeiger. He is the producer of the feature documentary Ophir and project director of web-documentary series, The Colonial Syndrome. His first book State Crime on the Margins of Empire was published by Pluto Press in 2014. His second book, Uncovering The Crimes of Urbanisation, was published by Routledge in 2018.

Dr Shane MacGiollabhui

Senior Lecturer

Dr Shane Mac Giollabhuí is a Lecturer in Politics and Postgraduate Tutor at the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences at Ulster University.

He writes about political parties and democracy in Africa and police surveillance in the United Kingdom. His research has appeared in African Affairs, Party Politics, Democratization, the British Journal of Criminology, and Qualitative Research.

Invisible Policing: Inside the World of Covert Surveillance, co-authored with Dr Bethan Loftus (University of Manchester) and Professor Benjamin Goold (University of British Columbia) will be published by Routledge in 2018.

In previous posts, he has conducted postdoctoral research at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford (2009–11), lectured in African politics at the Department of Politics and IR, in associated with St Peter’s College, at the University of Oxford (2011–15), and at the Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin (2015–17).

If you are interested in conducting PhD research under his supervision, please get in touch. He welcomes, in particular, candidates with projects on any aspect of the police and policing in sub-Saharan Africa.

Research Publications

Political Parties in Africa

“Battleground: Candidate Selection and Violence in Africa’s Dominant Political Parties” in Democratization, Vol. 25, No. 6 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1451841

“Explaining the Rise of the Democratic Alliance: Organization and Identity in the Consolidation of Party Opposition in South Africa” in African Affairs (forthcoming, October 2018). Manuscript available on request

“The Fall of an African President: How, and Why, did the ANC Unseat Thabo Mbeki?” in African Affairs 116, 464 (July 2017).

“Last Man Standing: Ian Khama, Party Factions and the Durability of BDP Dominance”, with John Makgala, in Renske Doorenspleet and Lia Nijzink (eds.) Party Politics and Democracy in Africa: One-Party Dominance Reconsidered (London: Palgrave 2014).

“How Things Fall Apart: Candidate Selection and the Cohesion of Dominant Parties in South Africa and Namibia”, in Party Politics (July 2013). https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068811407599

Criminology (all co-authored with Dr Bethan Loftus and Prof. Benjamin Goold)

Invisible Policing: Inside the World of Covert Surveillance. London: Routledge, forthcoming, 2019.

“From a Visible Spectacle to an Invisible Presence: The Working Culture of Covert Policing”, in The British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 56, No 4 (2016).

“Watching the Watchers: An Ethnography of Covert Police Investigation in the UK”, in Qualitative Research, Vol. 16, No. 6, (2016).

Dr Aisling McLaughlin

Lecturer in Criminology

Dr Linda Moore

Senior Lecturer

Linda Moore’s research interests are youth justice and human rights within the penal context including the rights of prisoners’ families.

She is currently researching abortion rights in Northern Ireland, along with colleagues Ann Marie Gray and Goretti Horgan on an ESRC-funded project: ‘Buying abortion through the internet: exploring the social harm of criminalising abortion in Northern Ireland and the UK’.

Professor Duncan Morrow

Director of Community Engagement

Duncan Morrow is a Lecturer in politics where he has published widely in the fields of conflict resolution, Northern Ireland politics and the relationship between religion and politics.

He is currently the Director of Community Engagement at Ulster University developing relationships with groups and organisations across the community.

His research interests include Conflict and Religion, Ethnic Conflict, Northern Ireland Politics and the work of Rene Girard.

Duncan’s recent publications include Reconciliation and After in Northern Ireland: The Search for a Political Order in an Ethnically Divided Society (in Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism (2017:1)), ‘Violence Unveiled’ (in Kirwan M and Hidden, S. ed ‘Mimesis and Atonement, Bloomsbury 2017), and Public Attitudes to Peace Walls in Northern Ireland (with J. Byrne and C. Gormley-Heenan (2016).

For ten years, Duncan was Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council where he championed the concept of a shared future and peace-building by developing  the Council’s role in policy, in research and active learning, in organisations  and work on key issues such as interfaces, parading and regeneration and in work with victims and survivors of conflict. Between 2012 and 2015 he was Chair of the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism and in 2016 chaired the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Tackling Hate Crime, Prejudice and Community Cohesion.

Dr Conor Murray

Senior Lecturer

Dr Brian Payne

Senior Lecturer

Dr Michelle Rouse

Lecturer in Criminology

Dr Dawid Stanczak

Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice