The Forensic Psychology Podcast

Nicky Herron is a Registered Forensic Psychologist with over 25 years’ experience. For 15 years she has worked within Intervention Services, leading the development of several Accredited Programmes. Nicky has been a key figure in the evolution of accredited programmes, seeing their development from being largely risk-focused towards the strengths based and trauma informed programmes we have today.

Aubrey Van Zyl is a Senior National Specialist lead at Interventions Services. He started his journey with accredited programmes 20 years ago as a facilitator on various programmes. Since then, he has moved on to be a specialist trainer for accredited programmes and is now involved in the design of accredited programmes with a specialism in the review of underpinning theory, ensuring that evidence is translated into the design of accredited programmes.

Amy Lawson-Mayhew is a National Specialist Lead within Interventions Services and a Registered Forensic Psychologist. Before her current role, Amy was a psychologist in the North-East and Yorkshire Psychology Services Team, delivering and supervising accredited programmes. Three years ago Amy joined Interventions Services to dedicate herself to the development and oversight of accredited programmes on a national level. 

Lucie Homer is a Chartered and HCPC Registered Forensic Psychologist and has worked for His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service for 25 years. 

Lucie is currently the Regional Lead Psychologist for Wales, overseeing the operational delivery of psychological services across custody and community settings. 

Lucie has a particular interest in service, environment and regime development, and was involved in the opening of a new prison project in north Wales. She has developed and implemented services around peer mentoring and staff support/supervision as well as introducing counselling and trauma-informed services for those in prison and developing and delivering bespoke interventions with people unable to access other services.

It is this interest in working with ‘hard to reach’ individuals and offending behaviours which led her into her recent PhD study around criminal social identity including with individuals involved in serious and organised crime.

Jake Phillips is Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge where he is the director of the MSt in Applied Penology, a masters course for people working in managerial and leadership roles in the criminal justice system. Prior to moving to Cambridge he worked at Sheffield Hallam University for 12 years. Before doing his PhD – at Cambridge – he worked in various roles in the criminal justice system such as drug interventions worker and various roles supporting people on probation to find work and access drug treatment.

His academic research focuses primarily on probation policy and practice although he has carried out research in prisons, the police, parole and youth justice. He has carried out research on the emotional labour of probation work, probation practitioner wellbeing, the impact of inspection on probation, people who die whilst under probation supervision, privatisation in probation and, more recently, the concept of hope in the probation context. He is editor of Probation Journal and co-chair of the European Society of Criminology’s working group on Community Sanctions and Measures.

Professor Theresa Gannon is a Professor of Forensic Psychology at University of Kent and has worked in forensic psychology practice for nearly two decades in NHS and prison settings.

She has published widely in the areas of rehabilitation, sexual offending and fire setting and has make a significant contribution to advancing theory and practice.

Professor Russell Kolts is a Professor of Psychology at Eastern Washington University.

An internationally-recognized trainer in compassion-focused therapy (CFT), he has co-authored scientific articles on compassion, CFT, and various areas of psychology, as well as several books, including CFT Made Simple and Experiencing Compassion Focused Therapy from the Inside Out (with Tobyn Bell, James Bennett-Levy, and Chris Irons).

Russell has specialised in applying CFT to problematic anger, reflected in his book The Anger Workbook, working with people in prison, and a TEDx talk entitled Anger, Compassion and What it Means to be Strong.