Doctor Michelle Newberry

Dr Michelle Newberry

 BSc Hons, MSc, PGCHE, FHEA, PhD
Associate Professor

Research interests

  • Motivations for criminal behaviour
  • Violent offending (murder, intimate partner violence and animal cruelty)
  • Poaching and the illegal wildlife trade 

More research

Accepting applications from PhD students.

Connect with Michelle

About

Michelle joined the University of Southampton in 2018 after working for nine years as a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Portsmouth. Prior to her posts in academia she worked in prisons and psychiatric hospitals with violent offenders.

Her research primarily seeks to understand offenders’ motivations for criminal behaviour as well as attitudinal change and desistance from offending. She is particularly interested in violent crime, including murder, domestic violence, and animal cruelty, and the interrelations between these.

Michelle has conducted various projects which have investigated how domestic violence perpetrators abuse companion animals as a way to manipulate and coerce human victims. She is also interested in perpetrators' motivations for engaging in wildlife crime and is currently carrying out research that is investigating the poaching of rhino horn and pangolin scales in East Africa.