Laura Pajon

Senior Lecturer at Liverpool Centre for Advanced Policing Studies

Trainer

Dr Laura Pajon is a Senior Lecturer at the Liverpool Centre for Advanced Policing Studies. Her research focuses on law enforcement and multi-agency responses to serious and organised criminality, in particular human trafficking and modern slavery crimes. She has led a series of research projects providing empirical insight into the investigation of human trafficking crimes, exploring the complexities and the factors that influence investigation performance, and the impact of multi-agency responses to tackle human trafficking. She has also conducted studies examining the risks and causes of labour exploitation in the UK, and published in other criminal justice aspects such as eyewitness testimony and victimisation.

As a result of her research, Laura collaborates closely with local, regional and national law enforcement agencies (e.g., Gangmasters & Labour Abuse Authority, Immigration and Enforcement, local and regional police forces), and numerous stakeholders (e.g., local authorities, health services, businesses), including leading non-governmental organisations (e.g., Unseen, Stop the Traffik, Barnardo's, the British Red Cross, or Justice and Care). She has advised and influenced the way police and other stakeholders organise the response to human trafficking crimes, as well as informed major police trafficking operations within the East Midlands. Laura’s research on police collaboration also led to the establishment of an anti-slavery partnership (involving more than 44 agencies), which she led and coordinated from its formation in 2018 till 2021. The group secured integrated local responses to human trafficking with a view of safeguarding victims of trafficking and disrupting criminality.

Laura’s work and research on human trafficking criminal investigations and anti-slavery partnerships have received national and international recognition, being praised nationally and internationally by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Association of Universities (IAU), and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner Office for its high quality and its capacity to impact and inform policy and practice.