Our Fellows
The Avengers team offers a unique blend of professional and educational experience. Our Fellows bring a wide range of skills, disciplines, and experience to our work. We draw on academics from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ghana, and Israel.
Dr Barak Ariel Furman
Senior Fellow and Managing Partner
Area of Research: Deterrence Theory and Social Control, Compliance, Evidence-Based Policy, Research Methods, Experimental Criminology, Policing, Law
Dr. Barak Ariel Furman is a Professor in Experimental Criminology at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. Dr Ariel is involved in evaluation research projects with a large number of criminal justice agencies around the world, specifically on crime and place, technology, gangs, and legal reforms. He is an advisor to several governments and police departments, including a UK Cross-Whitehall Trial Advice Panel, Uruguay Police, and several forces in England and Wales, United States, Latin America and Europe.
He is the recipient of the Academy of Experimental Criminology Young Experimental Scholar Award, European Society of Criminology Young Criminologist Award, and a Fellow of the Division of Experimental Criminology. He is also a Jerry Lee Scholar at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University.
As the chief analyst of the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology, Barak is involved in several field experiments, working in collaboration with Professor Lawrence Sherman and Dr. Heather Strang on Restorative Justice Trials, as well as in collaboration with Professor David Farrington on blocked randomised experiments. he has also collaborated with Stockholm Prize Winner Professor David Weisburd and Dr Alex Sutherland of RAND Europe.
Watch Barak deliver a speech to The British Academy and discuss White Collar Crime and Compliance for Cambridge University. See his work on policing and technology around the world. The work has been extensively covered in the media, such as in the Guardian.
John Parkinson
Senior Fellow
Area of Research: Evidence Based Policing, police leadership, organizational modernization, child exploitation, organized crime, terrorism
John D. Parkinson is a Visiting Professor at the University of Huddersfield and a Senior Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing. From 2013 through 2019, he was a supervisor in the Master’s degree in Applied Criminology and Police Management (Cambridge Police Executive Programme) at the University of Cambridge. A career police officer who retired in 2013 as Chief Constable of the West Yorkshire Police, he has been heavily engaged since then in the leadership development and capability of police around the world. He is a Strategic Policing Advisor to the UK Home Office International Capability and Development directorate working in the Middle East.
John has also worked with police in the USA, Canada, Scandinavia, Europe, Somalia, Qatar, Australia, Hong Kong and the MCTP-IV programme at the SV Patel National Police Academy in India. He has also been active in public service leadership. His appointments include Independent Chair of the Modern Slavery and Anti-Trafficking Network, a regional network involving statutory, non-statutory and third sector organisations engaged in addressing and dealing with issues of modern slavery. He is also a Trustee and Director of the Internet Watch Foundation working with government and industry sectors to reduce victimisation of children through the removal of child sexual abuses images online.
As Chair of the Advisory Board of the Secure Societies Institute, University of Huddersfield, he has supported the Director of the Institute in developing applied cross discipline research capability in areas of counter terrorism, human trafficking and forensic science. As Chair of the Advisory Board and Senior Research Fellow of CENTRIC (Centre of Excellence for Research in Intelligence, Organised Crime and Terrorism), he has supported the Director to lead world class research developments in the fields of Intelligence, Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism.
Dr Matt Bland
Senior Fellow
Area of Research: Evidence Based Policing, domestic Abuse, algorithms in policing. randomised controlled trials, data Mining
Dr. Bland is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, where he lectures and supervises students on the M.St. Degree in Applied Criminology and Police Management (Police Executive Programme). Formerly, he was Head of Strategic Analysis and Principal Intelligence Analyst for Norfolk and Suffolk Constabularies for more than 15 years, during which time he played a leading role in embedding of the National Intelligence Model and Force Management Statements. Dr. Bland is also a Visiting Senior Fellow in Policing at the University of Suffolk and a scholar at the Jerry Lee Institute for Experimental Criminology.
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Dr Vincent Harinam
Senior Fellow
Area of Research: Data science, computational criminology, social network analysis, GIS, cybercrime, organized crime, algorithmic policing
Dr. Harinam lectures and supervises students on the M.St. Degree in Applied Criminology and Police Management (Police Executive Programme) at Cambridge University's Institute of Criminology. Before pursuing his PhD, Vincent worked with Canadian law enforcement as a consultant and then as a research associate at a US-based think tank.
Dr Justice Tankebe
Senior Fellow
Area of Research: Policing, legitimation and legitimacy, organisational justice, corruption, vigilantism and extra-legal punishment, comparative criminology, sociology of law, crime and criminal justice in sub-Saharan Africa, counter-terrorism policing, sentencing decision-making, the death penalty, police self-legitimacy
Dr Tankebe is a University Lecturer in Criminology and a Fellow at St. Edmund's College, University of Cambridge. He holds MPhil degree in Criminological Research and a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Cambridge. Justice has held postdoctoral research fellowships from the ESRC, the British Academy, and Fitzwilliam College. Prior to his current appointment, he was a teaching associate on the Police Executive Programme at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge. Justice attended Agogo State Secondary School (now Agogo State College), Ghana. He studied Sociology at the University of Ghana, Legon, where he also worked as a teaching assistant.
Dr Cristóbal Weinborn
Senior Fellow
Area of Research: Policing, advanced statistical analyses, GIS, methods and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of offenders
Cristóbal is a clinical psychologist with more than six years of experience in public policies and criminological research in Chile, with extensive knowledge of principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of young offenders.His areas of research are evidence-based policing, experimental criminology and situational crime prevention. He recently finalized a randomized controlled trial that measured the effects of foot patrol policing by Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) in the city of Peterborough, United Kingdom. Cristóbal has more than six years experience in public policies and criminological research.
Dr Renée J. Mitchell
Senior Fellow
Area of Research: policing, experimental criminology, communication intelligence
Renée J. Mitchell is a Sergeant at the Sacramento Police Department where she has worked for the last 17 years. Her doctoral dissertation is based on a 15 minute high visibility intermittent random patrol hot spot policing program conducted in Sacramento, CA with the Sacramento Police Department. She designed, implemented and assisted in the analysis of a 90-day randomized control trial with the assistance of researchers from George Mason University. Sergeant Mitchell's hot spot study won the 2012 International Association of Chiefs of Police Excellence in Law Enforcement Research Silver Award.
Renée holds a Bachelor's of Science in Psychology, Master's of Arts in Counseling Psychology, a Master's of Business Administration and a Juris Doctorate from McGeorge School of Law. She was also awarded one of only two Fulbright Police Research Fellows for 2009/2010 where she worked with the London Metropolitan Police Service and studied evidence based policing under Professor Lawrence Sherman at the University of Cambridge. She is a Jerry Lee Scholar at the Institute of Criminology and a Police Foundation Fellow.
Area of Research: policing, experimental criminology, communication intelligence
Renée J. Mitchell is a Sergeant at the Sacramento Police Department where she has worked for the last 17 years. Her doctoral dissertation is based on a 15 minute high visibility intermittent random patrol hot spot policing program conducted in Sacramento, CA with the Sacramento Police Department. She designed, implemented and assisted in the analysis of a 90-day randomized control trial with the assistance of researchers from George Mason University. Sergeant Mitchell's hot spot study won the 2012 International Association of Chiefs of Police Excellence in Law Enforcement Research Silver Award.
Renée holds a Bachelor's of Science in Psychology, Master's of Arts in Counseling Psychology, a Master's of Business Administration and a Juris Doctorate from McGeorge School of Law. She was also awarded one of only two Fulbright Police Research Fellows for 2009/2010 where she worked with the London Metropolitan Police Service and studied evidence based policing under Professor Lawrence Sherman at the University of Cambridge. She is a Jerry Lee Scholar at the Institute of Criminology and a Police Foundation Fellow.
Gabriela Sosinksi
Junior Fellow
Area of Research: fear of crime, quasi-experimental designs, survey methodologies
Ms Sosinski came to Hebrew University in 2013 and she is currently enrolled in the PhD program at the Institute of Criminology in the Hebrew University. Her areas of research are evidence-based crime prevention strategies, fear of crime, experimental criminology and meta-analysis. During the academic year 2016/17 she will be conducting research on a major project funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (Department of Justice) in Miami Beach Police Department, as well as a Home Office funded project with Sussex Police, UK. Ms Sosinski has collaborated with the Avengers Institute as a field researcher.
Before joining The Avengers Gabriela worked as an adjunct lecturer at Hebrew University, teaching advanced statistics courses in Israeli leading academic institutions.