Dom Willmott is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Legal and Criminological Psychology, interested in bias within legal decision-making. His main specialism is jury decision-making within sexual offence trials alongside investigating the impact of rape myths and broader social cognitions in gender-based violence. He has published more than 70 scientific articles and research outputs and received almost £5 million pounds in funding to carry out his research.
Dom joined Loughborough University in April 2022 as a Senior Lecturer in Criminology, having previously taught Forensic Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Huddersfield. His PhD examined fairness and functionality of juror decision-making within English rape trials.
Dom is Visiting Professor of Psychology at SWPS University in Poland and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, awarded in recognition of the contributions he has made to the discipline of Psychology. In January 2023, Dom was selected to be a founding member of the Royal Society’s newly established UK Young Academy, a network of researchers from across the UK said to have made significant contributions to their respective fields. UKYA members are tasked with identifying innovative interdisciplinary solutions to help tackle the biggest challenges that face global societies, during their five-year tenure.
Dom is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Criminal Psychology and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Psychology (Forensic and Legal Psychology Section). He also serves on the Editorial Board of a number of other international publications including the Journal of Criminal Justice, The Police Journal, and Frontiers in Quantitative Psychology and Measurement.
Dom is Chair of the Board of Trustee’s for Justice is Now, a registered charity aiming to improve outcomes for victim-survivors of sexual violence in the UK and previously served as Academic Advisor to Dame Vera Baird, the Victim Commissioner for England and Wales, from July 2020 until her term of office came to a close in 2022.
Finally, Dom continues to work closely with collaborators in the US, Canada, China, Poland and the Caribbean, as well as colleagues at several UK universities.
Dom’s main research interests involve examining bias within the criminal justice system alongside attempting to measure and reduce problematic attitudes which underpin gender-based violence throughout global societies. He regularly consults government agencies and NGO’s in the UK and abroad on such issues.
Between 2017 - 2022 he was a Co-Investigator on a large UKRI GCRF multi-country research project tasked with developing and evaluating prosocial computer games that educate young people about gender-based violence. As part of this research, the None-in-Three Project, Dom and his colleagues carried out primary research and educative interventions with more than 20,000 children and young adults in Uganda, India, Jamaica, and the UK.
Since then, in collaboration with researchers at Tsinghua University in China, as well as Lancaster University, Kings College London, Glasgow Caledonian University, and the University of Law in the UK, he has received both small and large-scale funding to further investigate varying aspects of public and juror biases towards victims of sexual and intimate partner violence. Alongside Dr Siobhan Weare at Lancaster University, he recently secured prestigious funding from the Economic and Social Research Council to examine jury-decision making within sexual offence trials where men are the victims of violence perpetrated by other men and women.
External Research Funding
ESRC - £438,634.72 (2023 – 2026)
- Trial by gender? Examining jury decision making in rape of male victims
Chinese Ministry of Education - 200,000 CYN (2023 – 2026)
- Assessing the Causes and Effective Interventions for IPV in China.
British Academy - £9,897.00 (2023 – 2024)
- Exploring Defendant Race and Complainant Sexuality on Juror Judgments.
AHRC (GCRF) - £4.3 Million (2017 – 2022)
- Testing the effectiveness of pro-social computer games to tackle GBV.
ESRC IAA - £13,080.00 (2020 – 2021)
- Assessing public perceptions towards male victims of sexual violence.
British Academy - £9,966.00 (2020 – 2021)
- Investigating public attitudes towards rape justice.
At Loughborough University Dom delivers teaching on a range of topics and is the Programme Leader for Postgraduate Taught courses Including Loughborough University’s MSc in Criminology.
Dom contributes to teaching on the following modules:
- Forensic Psychology (Module Leader)
- Responding to Sexual Violence (Module Leader)
- Psychology and Law
- Violence and Violent Crime
- Understanding Punishment: Criminal Justice in E&W
- Criminology Dissertations
Dominic is available to supervise PhD projects investigating; jury decision-making in sexual offence trials, the nature and prevalence of rape myths among varied populations; attitudes towards sexual and domestic violence in the CJS; offending behaviour and motivations; bias within the criminal justice system.
Completed PhD Students
- Dr Catherine Phillips – An examination of the impact of language, rape myth beliefs and juror education on decision-making within rape trials(Awarded 2024).
- Dr Lara Hudspith – Justice for Rape Victim-Survivors: Exploring the Need for a Court-Based Intervention to Address Jurors' Rape Myth Acceptance(Awarded 2022).
- Dr Russell Woodfield – Profiling Trauma and the Associated Mental Health Outcomes in Prison Personnel(Awarded 2020).
Current PhD Candidates
- Georgia Barnett – Desistance and Treatment among Men Convicted of Sexual Offences.
- Lucie Homer – Exploring Criminal Social Identity (CSI) among OCG prison populations in England & Wales.
- Gill Kirkman – An investigation of Adolescent Dating Violence and Attitudes (ADVA) among UK adolescents.
- Eleanor Manhong Li – Investigating the Prevalence and Impact of Rape Myths in China: What Role does Confucian Culture Play?
- Hannah Lorimer – Exploring the role of offending identities in the risk assessment and risk management process of offending men.
- Alex Paradise – Consumption of Virtual Reality Indecent Images of Children and the Risk of Offending Escalation
- Gareth Ross – Investigating the relationship between prison social climate and criminal social identity within inmate populations.
Selected Works on Jury Decision Making
- Willmott, D. & Hudspith, L. (2024). Jury Trials and Rape Myth Bias: Examining the Research Evidence, Stakeholder Perspectives and Effective Solutions. In N. Monaghan (Eds.). Contemporary Challenges in the Jury System: A Comparative Perspective (pp. 167-188). London: Routledge.
- Hudspith, L., Wager, N., Willmott, D., & Gallagher, B. (2024). The Impact of Rape Myth Education on Jury Decision-Making: A Systematic Review. Trauma, Violence & Abuse.
- Lilley, C., Willmott, D. & Mojtahedi, D. (2023). Juror Characteristics on Trial: Investigating how Psychopathic Traits, Rape Attitudes, Victimisation Experiences and Juror Demographics influence Decision-Making in an Intimate Partner Rape Trial. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 1086026.
- Hudspith, L., Wager, N., Willmott, D., & Gallagher, B. (2023). Forty Years of Rape Myth Acceptance Interventions: A Systematic Review of What Works in Naturalistic Institutional Settings and How this can be Applied to Educational Guidance for Jurors. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 24(2), 981-1000.
- Daly, E., Smith, O., Bows, H., Brown, J., Chalmers, J., Cowan, S., Horvath, M., Leverick, F., Lovett, J., Munro, V., Willmott, D.(2023). Myths about Myths? A Commentary on Thomas (2020) and the Question of Jury Rape Myth Acceptance. Journal of Gender-Based Violence, 7(1),189-200.
- Willmott, D., Boduszek, D., Debowska, A., & Hudspith, L. (2021). Jury Decision Making in Rape Trials: An Attitude Problem? In D. Crighton & G. Towl (Eds.), Forensic Psychology (3rd, pp. 94-119). Chichester: Wiley.
- Willmott, D.,Boduszek, D., Debowska, A. & Woodfield, R. (2018). Introduction and Validation of the Juror Decision Scale (JDS): An Empirical Investigation of the Story Model. Journal of Criminal Justice, 57, 26-34.