Pearson, Geoff

Geoff Pearson is Professor of Law at The University of Manchester and Academic Director of the N8 Policing Research Partnership, UK. He was awarded his PhD on ‘Legal Responses to Football Crowd Disorder’ in 1999 and has published extensively on football crowd behaviour, policing, and law, largely utilising ethnographic research. In this area he has worked extensively with police forces, governing bodies, stakeholders, and policy makers and has contributed to several influential official reports and inquiries on the subject of football crowd disorder and regulation.

Clifford Stott is Professor of Social Psychology at Keele University. He specialises in research on crowds, ‘riots’, ‘hooliganism’ and police use of force. He regularly works with police forces and governments internationally advising them on science led and dialogue-based approaches to public order management. In 2021 he was awarded an MBE for the contribution of his work to crowd psychology and in 2015 his work on policing crowds was acknowledged by the ESRC as one of its top 50 achievements in its 50-year history.