I am a criminologist, educator, and specialist in how formal processes construct guilt, credibility, and risk — with over 20 years' experience across higher education, criminal justice, and organisational practice.
My work focuses on the systems and structures that determine whether autistic people are understood accurately in investigations, disciplinaries and other high-stakes formal settings—or whether difference is misread as dishonesty, misconduct or risk.
I founded CESI to bridge that gap — bringing academic research on how guilt and credibility are constructed together with practical training for the people who run formal processes.
When formal processes are built to see people accurately, difference stops being mistaken for guilt — and decisions become fairer for everyone involved.
Before founding CESI Learning, I worked across higher education, criminal justice, social inclusion research, addiction services, homelessness support and workplace coaching. These experiences shaped my understanding of how institutions can either support people or misread and exclude them.
I was previously Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice and Co-Director of Cyfiawnder: The Social Inclusion Research Institute at Wrexham University. I remain a Visiting Research Associate and have published extensively on criminal justice, social exclusion, institutional fairness and the construction of guilt and credibility.
More recently, my workplace coaching with autistic adults revealed how frequently communication differences, distress and responses under pressure were being interpreted as attitude, dishonesty or misconduct. That recurring pattern became the foundation of CESI Learning.
Over time, through higher education, workplace coaching and criminological research, I became increasingly aware of one recurring pattern: formal processes such as investigations, disciplinaries and interviews can misread autistic communication, memory and responses under pressure.
I saw how processes built around neurotypical expectations of communication, recall and credibility could quietly influence who appeared believable and who did not—sometimes before the evidence had been fully understood.
I founded CESI Learning to address that problem directly: equipping the people who lead formal processes with the knowledge and practical tools to understand autistic people more accurately and make fairer, more defensible decisions.
I kept seeing autistic people judged through processes that were not designed to understand how they communicate, remember and respond under pressure.
If you want your organisation to make fairer, more informed and more defensible decisions involving autistic employees, get in touch to discuss CESI Learning’s training and qualifications.
If you have any questions, please contact me.