Simon-Lewis Menzies

I am currently undertaking a PhD project in forensic science communication and decision making in the Scottish Criminal Justice System, with focus towards sexual and non-sexual violent crime in Scotland.

I am currently one of the first Volunteer Student Coordinators for the Scottish Institute of Policing Research.

I hold an MSc in Applied Criminology and Forensic Psychology from Edinburgh Napier University and a BSc First Class Honours Degree in Applied Criminology: Offender Management from the University of Derby.

I have experience in using quantitative methodologies most notably in both undergraduate and postgraduate dissertation projects. Likert Scales and a combination of paired t-tests and crosstabulations were employed to comparatively analyse attitudes to capital punishment in undergraduate dissertation. These methods as well as forms of trend analysis were used to determine to what extent, if any, there were divergences between England and Wales and Scotland relating to sentencing and disposals of drug offences as part of postgraduate dissertation.

On my undergraduate degree I worked alongside Professor Dave Walsh the Gangmasters’ Licencing Authority and others to examine interviewer performance in relation to the retrieval of eye-witness testimony using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to gauge, code and compare interviewer skill with correctly retrieved testimony against variables such as length of interview and conduct of interviewer.

On my MSc I investigated the UK trade in arms to UK Foreign Office countries of concern for human rights violations focusing on Colombia. This was a mixed methods project with over twenty semi-structured and unstructured interviews conducted with various experts and eye witnesses which were thematically analysed, various documents procured through freedom of information requests and those already available in the public domain were also thematically analysed and examined for trends.