Tech and Human Trafficking

Joe is the Director of Crime, Justice and Security at NatCen and heads a team working on a range of complex mixed-methods research projects. NatCen’s Crime, Justice and Security team specialise in drugs policy, child criminal exploitation and youth violence, violence against women and girls (VAWG), and counter extremism.

Before joining NatCen, Joe was Head of Research at Crest Advisory, running their in-house think tank, publishing influential research on county lines, youth violence and the response of the justice system to COVID, amongst other topics. Joe is an acknowledged national expert on Child Criminal Exploitation and is the originator of the ‘Franchise Model’ as a description of the evolution of county lines.

Joe has held a range of political roles, including Special Adviser to the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and eleven years as an elected councillor in the London Borough of Islington, which included six years as Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Young People. Joe is currently writing a book about county lines drug networks with a co-author for Routledge.

Roza Tsagarousianou is a Professor of Media and Migration at the Westminster School of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster. She serves as the Research Lead for the University of Westminster's Diversity and Inclusion Research Community, where she sets and develops research policy in the area of Diversity and Inclusion across the university's Colleges and Schools. Professor Tsagarousianou has developed and currently leads the MA in Diversity and Media, offered in collaboration with the Media Diversity Institute. She holds a BSc (Hons) with Distinction in Political Science and International Studies from Panteion University (Athens, Greece) and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Kent at Canterbury. She is a member of the CAMRI research centre, the Homelands research group, and the Westminster University Migration Network. Additionally, she has held the position of Director of the CAMRI Doctoral Programme for several years, contributing to its development and expansion. Professor Tsagarousianou has also played a key role in establishing the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and its Diasporas, Migration, and the Media section.

Starting his career as a mathematician, Dr Tom Higgens, then moved into Risk Analysis for Global Financial Institutions, presenting to the regulators on the capital requirements of the bank. He then moved into building data science products across established companies and for start ups, sold to and used by companies across the UK. He then held management positions in the Logistics and Oil & Gas industries. Following a decision to give something back to society, he ran data science for Macmillan Cancer Support, before moving to his currently current leadership position running data and technology for Stop The Traffik.

Sherine is the Director of NatCen International where she leads a team of senior experts and researchers dedicated to shaping global social policy and practice. She is widely acknowledged as an expert in humanitarian and development policy, conflict, security and evidence uptake with a focus on the UK, Africa and the Middle East. Sherine has two decades of experience in leading and delivering on complex research projects and consortia as well as providing policy advice at a senior level to governments, donors and civil society organizations on their engagement in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. 

Prior to establishing NatCen International, Sherine was a Senior Research Fellow at ODI where she launched and co-led a cross-institutional initiative on peace and sustainability in the Mediterranean region. Earlier in her career, she set up a research unit on regional philanthropy and civic engagement at the American University in Cairo. Sherine has held fellowships at Keble College at the University of Oxford, the Department of Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ and the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia. She has also been a guest lecturer at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and Cranfield University in England as well as the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar. Her work can be found in the International Review of the Red Cross, the Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, Development in Practice as well as book chapters in edited volumes with Palgrave Macmillan and James Currey. Sherine sits on the Board of Trustees of Protection Approaches, a UK charity dedicated to combatting identity-based violence in the UK and globally.

Sherine holds a DPhil from the Department of International Development and St. Cross College at the University of Oxford.

Lilian Miles is Professor of Sustainability and Social Enterprise at the University of Westminster. Her research interests include gender, migration, health and work. She received competitive external grant money (Newton Fund Impact Scheme, 2020-22) to implement interventions in factories in Malaysia to support the reproductive health of their factory women migrant workers. She co-authored a Strategy Paper on preventing GBV against women migrant workers in Malaysia (2019), which was circulated to the government to inform the drafting of its twelfth National Development Plan. She led a research team to investigate how resettlement planning for Syrian refugees in London can be improved (2022). She was co-director of a team commissioned by the UK Home Office (2022) to investigate asylum seeker decision-making in journeys to the UK. Lilian is part of a programme of research exploring how reproductive health education can be delivered to Rohingya refugee adolescents via social media in Malaysia (2023). Much of her work is published in highly regarded international Journals. Lilian has developed extensive networks of researchers, advocacy organisations, health care providers and employer associations.