Expert Network Addressing Child Sexual Abuse (ENACSA)
Purpose and ethos
The purpose of ENACSA is to create a visible, powerful research group that generates and shares knowledge, and collaborates and works together to drive change in policy and practice to prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE), improve responses to CSAE, and reduce the impacts of CSAE on all that are affected both personally and professionally.
Network members work together to create meaningful research projects and other activities, address CSAE knowledge gaps, and improve CSAE policy and practice. We continuously try to develop and share learning and build international CSAE knowledge in order to strengthen policy and practice across a range of relevant areas, not limited to prevention and protection.
The ethos of the network is based on a unified and collective commitment of members to preventing and combating CSAE and embraces the principle of collaboration over competition.
ENACSA members discussing strategy at the group's first in-person meeting at ARU's Chelmsford campus, autumn 2024
Contact us
If you’re a UK-based academic researching CSAE and are interested in joining ENACSA, or would like to know more about the network, email Ashley Perry at [email protected], Dr Deanna Davy at [email protected], or Prof Sam Lundrigan at [email protected]
ENACSA is coordinated by researchers at ARU's International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute (IPPPRI), University of Portsmouth, University of Huddersfield, and University of Central Lancashire.
ENACSA has 40+ UK-based academic members, including those listed below.
Prof Clare Allely, University of Salford
[email protected]
Expertise: The features of autism spectrum disorder that may provide the context of vulnerability to engaging in CSA or CSAM.
Debbie Allnock, College of Policing
[email protected]
Prof Rachel Armitage, University of Huddersfield
[email protected]
Expertise: Secondary victimisation and online child sexual abuse; the impacts of CSAM on the families of those under investigation/arrested for online CSA; agency responses to minimising secondary harms for families of perpetrators of online CSA; supporting families after an arrest for online CSA.
Simon Bailey, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Law enforcement response to online CSA.
Prof Helen Beckett, University of Central Lancashire
[email protected]
Expertise: Children and young people's experiences of CSA; service responses post CSA and criminal justice processes post CSA; qualitative and mixed methods research with children and young people, parents/carers and professionals; trauma-informed research; researcher wellbeing; research ethics; supporting policy and practice development.
Sherrie Caltagirone, Global Emancipation Network
[email protected]
Expertise: CSEA content moderation; AI/ML risk classification tools; image analysis; human trafficking including child exploitation; CSAM/HT-related civil litigation; victim identification toolsets.
Dr Emily Chiang, Aston University
[email protected]
Expertise: Discourse and corpus linguistic analysis of online child abuse conversations including online grooming and offender-to-offender interactions.
Prof Julia Davidson, University of East London
[email protected]
Expertise: CSEA and child online harms/protection.
Dr Deanna Davy, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Qualitative research: child sexual abuse; child trafficking; migration; access to justice.
Jeffrey DeMarco, University of Middlesex
[email protected]
Expertise: Perpetrator typologies; policing responses; content moderator wellbeing.
Prof Mark de Rond, Cambridge University
[email protected]
Expertise: Lived experience of paedophile hunters (based on four yrs of embedded fieldwork); advisor to OCAG taskforce.
Prof Anita Franklin, University of Portsmouth
[email protected]
Expertise: Disability, SEND, CSA and exploitation; trafficking; participatory methods; qualitative interviewing of disabled children and young people.
Sarah Goff, Manchester Metropolitan University
[email protected]
Expertise: Child voice and communication;; sexual abuse and exploitation and learning disabled, neurodiverse and children with special educational needs: Modern Slavery and children and young people with SEND; sexual abuse enquiries and learning disabled/neurodiverse children.
Prof Simon Hackett, Durham University
[email protected]
Expertise: Interpersonal violence; sexual abuse; sexual offending; harmful sexual behaviour in children and young people; safeguarding children.
Dr Cristina Izura, Swansea University
[email protected]
Expertise: Quantitative and qualitative research on online grooming language processes and behaviour; dating, resilience and vulnerabilities; Lead of the Swansea Team Researching Online Grooming (STRONG).
Dr Vasileios Karagiannopoulos, University of Portsmouth
[email protected]
Expertise: Cybercrime and cybersecurity education for young people in schools and colleges; regulation and law regarding illegal online content and social media; qualitative research and research ethics.
Lea Kamitz, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research: non-offending partners; online child sexual abuse perpetration; desistance from sexual offending.
Dr Juliane Kloess, University of Edinburgh
[email protected]
Expertise: Qualitative research methods; online sexual grooming; TA-CSA; CSAM (incl. decision-making around identification and classification); mental health and wellbeing in police officers working with CSEA; Dark Web CSEA-related behaviour/offending.
Prof Peter Lee, University of Portsmouth
[email protected]
Expertise: Ethical, operational and other human aspects of UK Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (drone) operations; the ethics of AI and autonomous weapon systems; moral injury and mental harms in military and police personnel.
Prof Sam Lundrigan, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Geographic profiling; male sexual violation; stranger interpersonal violence; juror decision-making; rape; online child sexual abuse; practitioner well-being; offender-based interventions.
Prof Tim McSweeney, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Quantitative and mixed methods research and evaluation across a range of criminal justice themes.
Dr Hannah Merdian, University of Lincoln
[email protected]
Expertise: CSAM offending behaviour; case formulation; database/process analysis; evaluation and feasibility studies.
Colleen Moore, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Sexual victimisation; conflict-related sexual violence; qualitative/mixed methods research.
Dr Caoilte Ó Ciardha, University of Kent
[email protected]
Expertise: Psychological theory and sexual offending; perpetration of online child sexual offending; help-seeking; deterrence messaging; quantitative methods, qualitative methods.
Prof Derek Perkins, Royal Holloway, University of London
[email protected]
Ashley Perry, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Sexual violence; rape myths; victim-blaming ideology; online child sexual abuse; officer well-being.
Prof Ethel Quayle, University of Edinburgh
[email protected]
Expertise: TACSA related crimes in relation to offenders, victims and images; prevention; situational crime prevention; DHI interventions; qualitative mixed/methods.
Dr Theresa Redmond, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Violence against women and girls; CSAE; sense-making and understandings of consent, agency and exchange within CSAE from personal and professional perspectives; feminist methodologies; narrative inquiry and analysis.
Carter Smith, ARU
[email protected]
Expertise: Quantitative methods; offender tradecraft; Dark Web; tech-facilitated crime.
Dr Bethan Taylor, University of Bedfordshire
[email protected]
Expertise: Domestic abuse support with a focus on participatory approaches with young people; child sexual exploitation and abuse research at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre, leading the Young Research Advisory Panel (YRAP).
Prof Nadia Wager, Teesside University
[email protected]
Expertise: Prevention; online CSA; disclosure of CSA; sexual revictimisation; impact of CSA; non-offending parents and families of people apprehended for online CSA; managing CSA offenders; supporting adult survivors of CSA and CSE.
Dr Peter Yates, Edinburgh Napier University
[email protected]
Expertise: Sibling sexual abuse; working with children and young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviour.
We hold regular all-network events. Most of these meetings are held online, but we occasionally host in-person events to encourage collaboration and exchange of knowledge and ideas.
We're also running a series of webinars on important topics related to child sexual abuse and exploitation. The first of these, Online Grooming: Insights from STRONG’s Research on Minors, Survivors and Groomers, takes place on Monday 7 October at 11am.
We've previously held events on the topics of implementing recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and researcher well-being.