Clifford Stott

Biography

Professor Clifford Stott MBE is a globally recognised scholar of crowd psychology, collective behaviour, and public order policing whose work has transformed international understanding of riots, protest, football disorder, and the governance of public space. He is Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration (KPAC), one of the University’s strategic research centres, which he founded and developed into a globally influential hub for the co-production of research, policy, and practice. He previously served as Dean for Research in the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

Professor Stott’s intellectual heritage lies in the social identity tradition of social psychology. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Stephen Reicher at the University of Exeter, working at the forefront of the emergence of the Social Identity Approach (SIA). In this formative period he learned directly from leading theorists including John Turner, Alex Haslam, Kate Reynolds, and John Drury, experiences that were further deepened through visiting positions at the Australian National University. These foundations shaped his central contribution to the development of the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), now the leading social–psychological account of crowd action, intergroup dynamics, and riot escalation.

Drawing on these insights, Professor Stott has led major programmes of work that have reformed the policing of crowds, protests, and football events across the UK, Europe, and the United States. His research has informed policy and operational doctrine for the Home Office, College of Policing, HMICFRS, the UK Football Policing Unit, UEFA, the European Union, and police agencies in Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, and multiple US cities including Seattle, Portland, and Columbus. He has also served on politically sensitive inquiries such as the International Expert Panel to the Hong Kong IPCC and UEFA’s investigation into the 2022 Champions League Final.

He has secured over £8.2 million in research funding from UKRI, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the US Department of Justice, and the European Commission, among many others. His current work spans police legitimacy and procedural justice, structural inequalities in policing, the psychology of mass emergencies, football crowd management, and the science of protest and public order. His forthcoming book, Policing the Crowd (Routledge), co-authored with Professor Ed Maguire (Arizona State University), synthesises three decades of theoretical and applied innovation and is expected to become a landmark text in the field.

Professor Stott’s contributions have been recognised with numerous honours, including the ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize and appointment as MBE for services to crowd psychology and the UK Government’s Covid-19 response.

Research and scholarship

Intellectual Heritage and Theoretical Foundations

Professor Clifford Stott’s research and scholarship are grounded in the social identity tradition of social psychology. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Stephen Reicher at the University of Exeter, where he was deeply embedded in the emergence of the Social Identity Approach during a formative period for the field. His intellectual development was shaped through close engagement with key figures including John Turner, Alex Haslam, Kate Reynolds, and John Drury, and further enriched through visiting positions at the Australian National University. This grounding established him as a social identity theorist whose work has consistently sought to explain how group processes, intergroup relations, and perceptions of legitimacy shape collective action.

Crowds, Conflict, and the Development of ESIM

Professor Stott’s early career made a defining contribution to the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), developed in collaboration with Reicher and Drury. ESIM demonstrated that crowd behaviour is structured, normative, and context-sensitive, and that police strategy plays a crucial role in the emergence or prevention of conflict. This model has since become the leading contemporary framework for understanding collective behaviour, riots, and crowd–police dynamics. Professor Stott’s research has extended ESIM into applied domains, shaping policy and practice for policing protests, football events, and public gatherings internationally. This translational impact, connecting social–psychological theory to real-world policing, has been central to his global reputation.

Policing, Legitimacy, and Democratic Authority

Building on ESIM, Professor Stott’s subsequent work has broadened to examine police legitimacy, procedural justice, and the social–psychological basis of cooperation with authority. Through major ESRC-funded research, he developed a process model of police–citizen encounters that situates legitimacy within group relational processes, demonstrating how identity, power, and perceptions of fairness shape officer and public behaviour. This strand of work has positioned him at the intersection of social psychology, criminology, and policing studies, with his analyses informing contemporary debates about proportionality, rights, and the governance of public space.

Policing Inequalities and Institutional Racism

A major recent focus of Professor Stott’s research concerns the structural drivers of inequality in police decision-making. His studies of ethnic disproportionality in police use of force and stop and search develop new explanations for how organisational systems, resource constraints, risk management practices, and operational cultures can produce patterned racial disadvantage independently of conscious bias. These analyses combine participant action research with advanced quantitative techniques—including Gini coefficients, Top Share metrics, regression analysis, and demographic mapping—to illuminate mechanisms of institutional racism within everyday policing. This work has contributed significant conceptual and empirical insight into how inequalities emerge, persist, and can be addressed through systemic reform.

Methodological Innovation and Research Philosophy

Professor Stott is recognised for a methodologically pluralist approach that integrates qualitative depth with quantitative rigour. He is a leading proponent of Participant Action Research (PAR), working in long-term partnerships with police forces, policymakers, and community stakeholders to co-produce knowledge that is both theoretically grounded and operationally relevant. His research combines ethnography, observational studies of high-risk public order and football contexts, survey and interview-based methods, large-scale analysis of policing datasets, and innovative applications of video-based behavioural coding, including analyses of marauding terrorist attacks and public disorder events. This pluralist methodological orientation enables him to address complex real-world problems with empirical precision and theoretical coherence.

Impact, Engagement, and International Reach

Professor Stott’s scholarship has had far-reaching impact across the UK, Europe, and the United States. His work has shaped police training, operational guidance, and national doctrine; informed major public inquiries and reviews; and contributed to reforms in cities including Seattle, Portland, and Columbus. As founding Director of the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration (KPAC), he has developed one of the UK’s leading centres for research on crowd psychology and policing, securing over £8.2 million in grant funding from UKRI, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the US Department of Justice, the European Commission, and multiple policing bodies. His forthcoming book, Policing the Crowd (Routledge), co-authored with Professor Ed Maguire, synthesises three decades of scholarship and is expected to become a defining text in the field.

Teaching

Professor Stott has taught extensively across social psychology, criminology, and policing studies at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Throughout his career he has integrated cutting-edge research into his teaching, drawing on live case studies from protest events, public order operations, football contexts, and international policing reform projects.

He has designed and led modules on group processes, crowd psychology, intergroup relations, collective conflict, and the social psychology of policing. His teaching emphasises the application of theory to real-world problems, encouraging students to examine issues such as legitimacy, procedural justice, public order policing, racism, and social change through both empirical and experiential lenses.

Professor Stott has supervised numerous undergraduate projects, MSc dissertations, and PhD students - several of whom have gone on to academic, policy, and policing careers. His supervision reflects his methodological breadth: he supports projects using ethnography, participant-action research, quantitative analyses of policing datasets, and innovative video-based behavioural methods.

Alongside formal teaching, he regularly contributes to professional development programmes for UK, European, and US police leaders, delivering evidence-based training on public order, negotiation, de-escalation, and legitimacy. This international training work ensures a continual two-way flow between scholarship and practice, enriching the university’s teaching environment and strengthening the real-world relevance of his pedagogical approach.

Further information

Professor Stott regularly contributes to national and international media, public engagement activities, and expert commentary on crowd psychology, protest, and policing. Selected examples include:

BBC Radio 4 – The Life Scientific

In-depth interview with Professor Jim Al-Khalili on the psychology of crowds, riot dynamics, and public order policing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k2l3

BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4, and international outlets

Expert commentary on policing, protest, public order, and major events.

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/the-psychology-behind-civil-unrest/

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/05/30/the-psychology-of-riots.cnn

Podcast interviews, including episodes on legitimacy, crowd behaviour, and the 2011 and 2024 riots.

Conference keynotes, public lectures, and practitioner training, including presentations to police forces, government bodies, international organisations, and academic audiences globally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe1W21n6sdA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ystTS_264V8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOpS7LtGFFc

Video