Alison Wakefield is Professor of Criminology and Security Studies at the University of West London, and a member of the executive of UWL’s Cybersecurity and Criminology Centre. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute and was until recently Chair of the Security Institute, the UK’s largest member association for security professionals.


Alison’s recent honours and awards include ranking third in the thought leadership category of IFSEC Global’s Top Influencers in Security and Fire for 2020, featuring in SC Media UK’s 50 Women of Influence in Cyber Security 2019, earning an Emerald Outstanding Paper 2018 award for the co-authored paper ‘Confronting the “fraud bottleneck”’ in the Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, and receiving the Association of Security Consultants Imbert Prize 2017 for her contribution to the security profession.


Her other publications include The Sage Dictionary of Policing (Sage, 2009, edited with Jenny Fleming), Selling Security: The Private Policing of Public Space (Willan Publishing, 2003), and Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention (Hart Publishing, 2000, edited with Andrew von Hirsch and David Garland).