Ashleigh Bennett

Professional biography

I am a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and qualified teacher, who has more than 30 years’ experience working with both public and private sector organisations. My approach is to apply psychological knowledge, theory and practice to organisational issues, such as culture and change, as well as issues at an individual or team level. My focus is on understanding how people behave at work in order to increase their productivity, job satisfaction and the overall effectiveness of an organisation.

I am passionate about shaping workplaces to be systematically inclusive at an individual, structural and cultural level. This motivated me to apply to conduct PhD research within this area and I started my PhD part time in October 2018 through the Centre for Policing Research and Learning.

Research interest

My PhD sits within the intersection between organizational culture, policing and gender.

It aims to explore what makes an ‘ideal’ firearms and tactical officer and to better understand the values and behaviours of employees and the impact this has on gender representation and inclusion. I am particularly interested to know:

What are the shared values and underlying assumptions about the ‘ideal’ worker and the prototypes and stereotypes in play?
How is this culture framed by gender and the impact it has upon inclusion? I am using Q methodology and semi-structured interviews with both male and female officers working within specialist firearms and tactical roles.

My Supervisors are Dr Lara Frumkin, Prof Rose Capdevila and Dr Volker Patent.