Laurence Alison
Chair in Psychology, Liverpool University
Job advertised in The Times Higher January 23, 2004
In January, the School of Psychology at Liverpool University advertised for a new chair and a new lectureship. The quality of the candidates who applied led to the school hiring three chairs and four lecturers.
Ian Donald, head of school, said: "It was a crazy outburst by the vice-chancellor. We had his unprecedented support in building the department. The candidates were all excellent and fitted well with the research groups we already have."
Professor Donald told The Times Higher that the department was hoping to build on its strength in forensic psychology and ingestive and addictive behaviour psychology.
He said: "We are already the major forensic and ingestive behaviour group in Europe, if not the world. We had a clear strategic plan to make the department even stronger and it worked very well."
One of the new appointees in the forensic psychology area is Laurence Alison from the University of Birmingham.
He has published extensively on the subject of how senior police officers conduct their business in major emergencies such as child abductions or terrorist threats. His work has appeared in, among others, The Journal of Psychology, Public Policy and Law and The Journal of Legal and Criminological Psychology .
He is looking forward to joining the department at Liverpool where there is emphasis on his speciality, the psychology of criminal investigation and policing. In Birmingham, the funding was focused on prison service risk and rehabilitation.
"Now I am at Liverpool, I will be able to work on setting up the Centre for the Study of Critical Incident Management, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police," he said.