Laura Bainbridge is a Lecturer in Criminal Justice at the University of Leeds. Her scholarly interests lie at the nexus between social policy, criminology and political science. She specialises in violence reduction and the multi-level processes in which policies and programmes ‘travel’ across the globe. Laura is the founder and chair of the UK Compulsory Sobriety Network and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Social Policy. She is also a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform’s Research Advisory Group, and the West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit’s Advisory Group.

Laura is currently leading two studies. The first explores the benefits and hazards of mandating domestic violence perpetrators to a period of compulsory sobriety, while the second is an N8 PRP funded project dedicated to understanding and preventing County Lines ‘cuckooing’ victimisation.

Laura is the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre’s Early Career Researcher (ECR) Champion. In fulfilling this role, she will ensure that ECRs aligned to the Centre are fully supported and have access to dedicated mentoring and training to enable them to become future research leaders. As a Co-Investigator for the Centre, Laura is also undertaking research as part of the County lines policing and vulnerability project.