Adam is Professor of Policing and Social Justice at the University of York and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Leeds. In 2013, he established and was the inaugural Director of the N8 Policing Research Partnership (N8 PRP, 2013-20); a collaboration between eight universities and policing partners across the north of England.

Alongside the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre, Adam is currently working on a European Commission Horizon 2020 project IcARUS: ‘Innovative Approaches to Urban Security’ (2020-24). In this project he led the research and production of the State of the Art Review and Roadmap that will inform the co-design and implementation of innovative approaches to urban security in the six partner cities. He is overseeing the evaluation of the outcomes from the interventions initiated across the partners cities.

He is Deputy Associate Dean for Research (Impact & Knowledge Exchange) in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of York, where he manages the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) and Yorkshire Policy Collaboration. From 2015-21, he was Director of the Leeds Social Sciences Institute.

He is a member of the Police Science Council, which provides independent advice to the National Police Chiefs’ Council in the UK on science, technology, analysis and research matters relevant to policing policy and operations. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an Honorary Lifetime member of the British Society of Criminology.