Dr Sally-Ann Ashton

BA, BA (Hons), MA, PhD, MPhil, MSc, PhD, CPsychol

Lecturer in the Psychosocial Analysis of Offending Behaviour

Email: Ashtons@edgehill.ac.uk 

Research interests:

Youth offending; urban gangs; child criminal exploitation; violent offending; county lines; hybrid gangs; female gangs; desistance; personality disorders; mental health and the CJS; veterans and offending; forensic psychology; investigative psychology; criminal narrative roles; offender interventions; policing; prisons; quantitative research design; mixed methods research design; applied research.

Sally-Ann began working in prisons in 2003 as part of a museum outreach programme as part of her role as Senior Assistant Keeper at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. She was subsequently awarded an AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship to work with prisoners and prison education departments (2007-09). During this period she obtained an MPhil in Criminological Research at the University of Cambridge researching the impact of cultural heritage programmes on the self-concept of Black male prisoners. In 2014 she was awarded an ESRC Impact Acceleration Grant from the University of Cambridge to develop Black cultural awareness training for prisoners and staff. 

In 2015 Sally-Ann obtained an MSc in Investigative Psychology from the University of Huddersfield. From 2015-18 Sally-Ann was a Graduate Teaching Assistant and doctoral researcher, obtaining her PhD in 2019: 'The relationship of psychological and social risk factors to offending and desistance in a sample of male gang and group offenders'. 

In 2017 Sally-Ann received a National Gang Crime Research Center Frederic Milton Thrasher Award for Superior Accomplishments in Gang Research; and in 2019 she was awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travel Fellowship to research gang interventions in the USA. 

Sally-Ann is a Chartered Psychologist and continues to research risk factors associated with adolescent offending and gangs. She is currently involved in a research project for Merseyside Police Violence Reduction Unit and is undertaking an evaluation of the impact of violence reduction interventions in Greater Manchester with Salford Foundation and Greater Manchester Combined Authorities. She is principal investigator for a study on the narrative roles of co-offending.