Melanie is a senior lecturer in Criminology at Liverpool Hope University, moving there in September 2023 after working at the University of Huddersfield since 2007. She completed her PhD in 2018 at University College London. This involved research on spatial crime concentrations (specifically within ‘risky facilities’) and crime opportunity. Melanie has also published related research on stolen property, offender ‘self-selection’, and car theft through burglary.
Melanie has previously worked as a Research Fellow with the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science and prior to this she was a crime analyst with Sussex Police. She has an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice (Loughborough) and an LLB (Derby).
Melanie is a committed ethical vegan and has been for many years. She has researched and written about ‘green criminology’ since 2010, with a particular focus on illegal trade in endangered species (under her former name, Wellsmith), sentencing (including research carried out for the WWF), forest crime in Ethiopia, and nonhuman animal victimology. She has various publications in academic journals, and has written for the Conversation, as well as member periodicals. Melanie is particularly interested in applying a victimological perspective to nonhuman animal harm and developing the concept of ‘Vegan Criminology’. Her work also includes crime prevention, policing and enforcement as they pertain to crimes perpetrated against nonhuman animals.
Melanie teaches green criminology and evidence-based policing. She supervises undergraduate and postgraduate research students pursuing a range of topics, including those involving harm to nonhuman animals. She regularly reviews papers for several journals and in 2017 she advised the judiciary of Sabah and Sarawak (Malaysia) on the introduction of sentencing guidelines for wildlife crimes.
Google Scholar list of publications: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=6pVhyJIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
