I am a senior lecturer in Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University, and the Head of Youth Justice for the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies. I have over 15 years' experience of working in youth justice, and I was the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship in 2007, evaluating the impact of boxing and martial arts programmes on communities in the USA. I visited kung fu clubs in Brooklyn, New York and famous boxing clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

My current research focuses on youth justice and sport criminology, and I have a particular interest in the impact of boxing on serious youth violence and sexual exploitation. I have recently published my book The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance, by Policy Press, and I am the Principal Investigator for the Comic Relief-funded project Getting out for Good: Preventing Gangs Through Participation. I publish widely in the field of sport criminology, and my Churchill Fellowship was my first research project. Since then I have gone on to research the impact of sport on communities in Bogota, Colombia, and Cape Town, South Africa, as well as more locally in Greater Manchester, and I now advise national policy-makers as a result.