Helen Wells

Biography

Helen is currently seconded to the National Police Chiefs’ Council within the newly formed National Roads Policing Coordination Centre where she is the academic lead for Innovation and Insight, a role which she began in June 2025 as part of Operation Topaz.

Until June 2026, Helen was also a UKRI Policy Fellow on a project entitled ‘The impact of Connected and Automated Vehicles on Policing service delivery’.

As well as delivering a number of other funded projects on the theme of policing and technology, Helen is Director of the Roads Policing Academic Network (@RoadsPolicingRN) – an interdisciplinary network of over 260 academics and research-engaged practitioners interested in researching roads policing in its broadest sense – which she established in 2018.

Helen graduated from Keele with a BA in Criminology and History (1st class) in 1998, before spending two years working in a Magistrates' Court. She returned to Keele in 2000, and graduated with a Masters in Criminology (with distinction) in 2001. After a period as a Community Safety Officer, Helen once again returned to Keele and was awarded her Ph.D in January 2007. She was appointed as a temporary, part-time lecturer in Criminology in January 2007, became a permanent lecturer in June 2007, and a senior lecturer in 2014.

Research and scholarship

Helen's research is largely focused on the area of roads policing, and has included funded research on subjects including vehicle enabled violence against women and girls, ‘ghost plates’ and untraceable vehicles, impaired driving, speeding and speed enforcement, ANPR, Community Speed Watch, uninsured driving, police tasking, public engagement, and Police and Crime Commissioners’ engagement with roads policing issues.  She is author of the 2012 book 'The Fast and the Furious: Drivers, speed cameras and control in a risk society' published by Ashgate, and co-author of the 2023 book ‘Policing Distracted Driving’ published by Palgrave, and numerous published papers in this area. 

Helen is Director of the Roads Policing Academic Network (Bluesky: @roadspolicingwells) – an interdisciplinary network of over 350 academics and research-engaged practitioners interested in researching roads policing in its broadest sense – which she established in 2018. 

Until June 2026, Helen worked for the Home Office looking at the implications of Connected and Automated Vehicles for policing and security, originally as a UKRI policy fellow and subsequently on secondment.

Helen has recently worked with the Department for Transport and Home Office on the national Roads Policing Review, as well as on the national rollout of Op. Tutelage (targeting uninsured driving). She has also conducted research for UKROEd (providers of NDORS driver education courses). 

As part of a team from Keele, Napier University, the University of Dundee and UCL, Helen was awarded an ESRC Large Grant to conduct research exploring the police use of technology as a means for interacting with the public, and its compatibility with procedural justice. This was known as the INTERACT project.

Helen has drawn research funding from the ESRC (large grants, CASE studentships), central government (Department for Transport, Home Office, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology), other national organisations (UKROEd, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau), the police (Staffordshire Police, Gloucestershire Police, The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Staffordshire), the private sector (VW, British Nuclear Fuels), local government (Staffordshire County Council, Newcastle-under-Lyme Safer Communities Partnership), and the third sector (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, Magistrates' Association.  

Teaching

Helen has taught across the undergraduate Criminology programme, including on modules such as Research Methods, Murder, Investigating Crime and Policing and the Police and also supervises undergraduate dissertations.   Helen has also contributed to the MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice, contributing sessions on technology and justice, Police and Crime Commissioners and roads policing, and supervising Masters dissertations. 

Supervision

Helen currently supervises PhD and Professional Doctorate students funded by a range of external partners as well as the ESRC (CASE).

Current supervised topics include: police vehicle telematics data; community concerns about road safety; driver diversionary courses and their place in a criminal justice landscape; security at temporary events; implications of automated vehicles for first responders.

Previous supervisions include: roads policing data and insights; fixed penalties in the criminal justice system; education and mobile phone offences by drivers; police/public encounters; everyday policing in Victorian England; risk terrain modelling in rural crime contexts;.

Helen is happy to be approached in relation to supervision of projects in the areas of roads policing, policing and technology, procedural justice and criminal justice policy, amongst others.