Vicky Mooney

Vicky is the Principal Lecturer and Academic Lead for Policing, being responsible for the day-to-day leadership of the academic team delivering 6 postgraduate programmes. These include the MSc in Counter Terrorism, MA in Criminology, MSc in Criminal Investigation, MSc in Criminal Justice, MSc in Cybercrime, and MSc in Financial Investigation.

Vicky has had a diverse career, both in education and working collaboratively with the Police since commencing her journey as a BA (Hons) Psychology student in 2001. Vicky’s interest in investigative psychology fuelled her early education and career choices to work alongside the Police within multi-disciplinary settings throughout her career, predominantly in a safeguarding capacity in Youth Justice and Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE). Vicky has experience writing Pre-Sentence Reports (PSR), recommending appropriate sentences for young offenders at Magistrates and Crown Courts, delivering offence focused intervention for Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programmes (ISSP), supervising offenders sentenced to a Detention and Training Order (DTO), acting as an Appropriate Adult during Police interviews and supported the Community Safety Partnership in community crime prevention. Vicky’s role as a CSE Worker involved working in a multi-agency sexual exploitation team alongside Police, Children’s Social Services and Health to safeguard, support officers with intelligence gathering in tackling organised criminal networks, supporting young people to prepare for Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) and Missing from Home (MFH) interviews in addition to providing intelligence during the Force Major Incident Team (FMIT) meetings. Vicky has since become research active by completing a PhD focusing on the perpetration of CSE, conducting Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) commissioned sexual violence research in Cheshire and Lancashire, Chairing the CSE Public Policy Symposium in London and a peer reviewer for the Qualitative Social Work Journal.

Prior to the Principal Lecturer role, Vicky has contributed to planning, development, delivery and evaluation as Senior Lecturer and Course Leader at both undergraduate and postgraduate level on the BSc professional policing degree and MSc sexual health degree at the University of Central Lancashire. Vicky has been involved in regular marketing initiatives to meet targets for recruitment and retention of students and has provided support for students as academic advisor to address both welfare and academic needs. Vicky continues to teach on postgraduate Policing programmes and supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertation students. Vicky contributes to the research activity of the school through participation in research groups, such as the UCLan Criminal Justice Partnership and has recently conducted county-wide needs assessments for Cheshire and Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioners on sexual violence and domestic abuse services and completed her own doctoral research.