Professor David Humphreys

David Humphreys is Professor of Social Policy Evaluation. He is an interdisciplinary social scientist whose research spans several fields including criminology, social policy, public health, and epidemiology. His main area of interest focuses on the causes, consequences and prevention of injury, with a focus on interpersonal violence. Much of his research investigates how structural changes—such as laws, regulations or changes to the built environment—impact on the rate and/or distribution of physical harm in the population.

David’s research typically utilises observational or non-randomised research designs. As a consequence, his research and teaching bring together an interest in methodological aspects of intervention research, such as: the design of complex interventions (natural and quasi-experiments); the measurement of physical harms and its related environmental exposures; and the assessment and synthesis of equity effects.

He joined the Department in October 2013, having previously held research positions at the Institute of Public Health and the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. He completed his doctorate at the Institute of Criminology, at the University of Cambridge, in 2011. David has affiliations with the Penn Injury Science Center at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Injury Prevention Center at the University of Michigan. He has held research grants from the NIHR (UK), ESRC (UK), National Institutes of Health (US)  and the Joyce Foundation (US), among others.