Donna Youngs

Professor Donna Youngs is an Investigative Psychologist based at Northumbria University in the UK. She trained under Professor David Canter and coauthored the first textbook of the discipline with him. For over a decade she was an associate director of the International Research Centre for Investigative Psychology, an academic centre focused on the ways in which psychology can inform investigations, commonly known as offender profiling, the modelling of psychological styles of violent and sexual offences from stalking through to serial homicide. Donna specialises on the modelling of modus operandi, criminal specialisation and offender  narratives.

She has published over 75 academic publications including six books and lectured to academic and police audiences around the world. she has contributed expert testimony to a number of high-profile legal cases including the reconsideration of the evidence against the Lockerbie bomber.

Drawing on her research specialty she has been the expert psychologist on 20 television series including channel 4 Hunted, BBC one's Murder Mystery and My Family, channel 5 Robbie Coltrane's Critical Evidence as well as numerous Netflix and CBS documentary series and one-off documentaries including ITVs re-examination of the murder of Jill Dando and most recently ITV’s The Football Fraudster.