Professor Layla Skinns will take up the role in September 2025.

Professor Layla Skinns

The N8 Policing Research Partnership has announced that Layla Skinns, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the School of Law at the University of Sheffield, will take on the role of N8 PRP Academic Co-Director for 12 months from September 2025.

A leading academic in the field of police detention, for nearly 20 years Professor Skinns has led large and impactful police custody projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Howard League for Penal Reform and more recently the STAR Fund. A key one of these is the ‘good’ police custody study, which sought to ‘robustly’ examine what is meant by ‘good’ police custody and to instigate changes to police custody policies and practices in England and Wales, leading to an Impact Case Study in REF2021. Her key recent publications include Police Powers and Citizens’ Rights (Routledge, 2019) and Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2021) and an award-winning journal article on the use of appreciative inquiry in policing research.

Together with Policing Co-Director Ben Ewart, Detective Superintendent and Head of Training and Student Officer Development at Greater Manchester Police, Professor Skinns will be responsible for the strategic and operational management of the partnership, providing support and oversight for the Police and Academic Leads for all 19 partner organisations.

Professor Skinns has been involved with N8 PRP since its inception in 2013 as a representative for University of Sheffield. Her work with N8 PRP has included contributing to a major report on the international context of police-academic collaboration published in 2018 and subsequent journal article on this topic.

In addition to her role with N8 PRP, Professor Skinns is Director of the Centre for Criminological Research. 

Professor Skinns will be taking up the role while the current Academic Co-Director, Professor Geoff Pearson, takes a period of research leave. Professor Pearson has held the post since 2020, and has led the partnership through major changes, most notably its transition to a partner-funded organisation. The success of this transition was marked in 2024 by the agreement of 19 partners to renew N8 PRP funding for 3 years.

Professor Skinns said, 

“I am delighted to be taking up this role, particularly having been involved in the N8 PRP for such a long time. Through my longstanding involvement in the N8 PRP and through my own research I am familiar with the challenges, but also immense benefits of police-academic collaboration and I cannot wait to get started!”

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