Dr Jude Towers

Dr Jude Towers is a Senior Lecturer in Policing. Since completing her PhD (Economic Inequality and Intimate Partner Violence against Women) in 2013, she has worked as a Senior Research Associate (Lancaster University), a Lecturer in Sociology (Lancaster University) and a Senior Lecturer in Policing (LJMU), before taking up a Senior Lectureship at Edge Hill in 2022. 

Jude’s research focuses on the construction and use of data, including concepts, definitions and measurement, with a series of projects and publications focusing on violence, human trafficking, mental health, and now trust in policing. These works aim to explicate the importance of understading the construction and use of data about the social world, including implicit and explicit conceptualisations, definitions, and regimes of measurement, to aid our understanding of social phenomenon and the related production and impact of academic knowledge, policy, and practice. 

Jude is currently working on three projects focused on policing and the wider CJS: (1) a project with an English police force researching the development and evolution of an out of court disposal scheme designed to divert those whose criminal offending is linked to their mental health diagnosis, away from the criminal justice system and into support services via a multiagency mental health diversion and advisory panel; (2) a collaborative writing project with a criminal jutice pracademic examining justice at the locus of the magistrate's court; (3) setting up a research project to establish contemporary understandings of the role of the police and the concept of trust in the UK, to better interrogate responses to the question 'do you trust the police'. 

Jude currently supervisors two PGRs who are investigating policing problems (domestic abuse and big data crime detection). She has two completions (Dr Jessica Phoenix (measuring domestic violence using police data and Dr Elouise Davies measuring domestic violence using the CSEW). 

Jude is an External Examiner for the BSc Professional Policing degree at UCL. 

• Pedagogy of and for policing research
• Construction and use of knowledge (data)
• Construction of knowledge creators 
• Measurement of social phenomena
• Concepts and challenges of justice (especially from policing perspectives)
• VAWGs.

Current Teaching

• LAW4016 Dissertation 
• LAW4021 Advanced Research Methods
• PLN3002 Police Research Report (BSc Professional Policing)
• PLN2006 Doing Police Research  (BSc Professional Policing)
• PLN1003 Criminal Justice (BSc Professional Policing)
• PLN1013 Skills for Professional Policing

Previous Teaching Experience

• Teaching and Learning Lead - Liverpool Centre for Advanced Policing Studies (LJMU)
• School of Justice Studies Teaching and Learning Coordinator (LJMU)
• APSS Faculty Education Committee (LJMU)
• Programme Lead MSc, BSc and BSHF in Policing and Cybercrime (LJMU)
• Module Lead Dissertation (PGT)
• Module Lead Advanced Research Skills (PGT)
• Module Lead Dissertation (UG)
• Module Lead Advanced Social Research Skills (UG)
• Module Lead EBP Project (UG) 
• Module Tutor Introduction to Criminology for Policing (UG)
• Module lead Violence and Society (UG)
• Module Lead Gender and Violence (PGT)
• Module Lead Making Research Count (PGT)
• External Advisor BSc Professional Policing University of Hull (2020)
• External Validator MSc Criminal Intelligence Analysis UCLAN (2018)