David V. Canter

You probably won't be surprised to hear that in real life, serious crime investigations are rather less reliant on gut instinct, including when it comes to using psychology to help track down offenders.

David Canter is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool and the founder of investigative psychology, a discipline that applies data analysis, behavioural science and statistical rigour to investigations, and which is now embedded in police training and procedures.

So a quick warning here that we will be discussing criminal cases in this programme, including mentions of serious sexual assault and murder.

But David didn't set out to work in criminal investigations.

Since then, he's contributed to numerous investigations and given evidence in court cases, authored influential books, and built an entire discipline from the ground up.

And he's also found time to get a PhD in music composition as well.

Professor David Canter, welcome to The Life Scientific.

It's a delight to be here.