Thai police officer to create sex offender profiles using PhD

Police Lieutenant Colonel Nutthika Keeratithammakrit’s Investigative Psychology PhD is being funded by the Royal Thai Government

INVESTIGATIVE PSYCHOLOGY researchers at the University of Huddersfield will enable a Thai police officer to become a pioneer of offender profiling in her country.

Funded by the Royal Thai Government, Police Lieutenant Colonel Nutthika Keeratithammakrit has begun a three year-doctoral project that focuses on sex offenders in Thailand.  She will be based at the University of Huddersfield, but will make return visits to her home country in order to gather data by conducting interviews with convicted sex offenders and compiling psychological profiles of these offenders.

One of her motivations is the fact that a serial rapist who has been targeting elderly women in Thailand remains at large after many years.  Lt-Col Keeratithammakrit hopes to gain psychological expertise and insights that could help solve this and similar cases.

The University of Huddersfield has a global reputation for its research and teaching in the field of Investigative Psychology.  Pol Lt-Col Keeratithammakrit’s PhD project is supervised by Dr John Synnott and Dr Maria Ioannou, who direct the University’s MSc course in Investigative Psychology and the MSc course in Security Science.

Pol Lt-Col Keeratithammakrit has served with the Thai police for 11 years.  Her specialities are polygraph examination and fingerprint analysis.  She has a Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Psychology and a Master’s in investigative and forensic psychology.

Determined to learn more about the subject, she discovered the University of Huddersfield’s reputation in the field and – fully supported by her government and employers – she enrolled for a full-time PhD.

When she has completed the doctoral project, she returns to police work, including polygraph analysis.  But she will also be equipped, she says, to develop offender profiling in Thailand, believing it has an important role to play.  Officers with a background in psychology are highly sought after in her country.

Dr Synnott said: “We are very happy to have a member of the Royal Thai Police developing important research with us at Huddersfield.  It just goes to show the presence Investigative Psychology and the University of Huddersfield has on an international stage by attracting such high calibre individuals to study here.  One ambition that we have is to develop Investigative Psychology not just in Thailand but across South East Asia.”

“The subject has rapidly developed in the last decade and we have, in the International Research Centre for Investigative Psychology, the largest dedicated Investigative Psychology Research Centre in the World, with over 100 internal members.

“We are already developing Investigative Psychology across the globe and have Investigative Psychology projects underway in all parts of Europe but also South East Asia, North America, North Africa and the Middle East.  Lt-Col Keeratithammakrit’s project fits nicely into our international research agenda.”

Dr Ioannou added: “The International Research Centre for Investigative Psychology is engaged in many projects across the full spectrum of criminality, however, it’s always important to develop Investigative Psychology in other parts of world.  Lt-Col Keeratithammakrit’s project will be seminal in this respect and we are already exploring the many opportunities that will be developed off the back of this relationship.”