Dr Jess Miller is Principal Investigator the award-winning Trauma Resilience in UK Policing project, bringing 20 years of research experience, including work in critical incident support and preventing violent extremism. Jess now translates the latest neuropsychology into the reality of operational police trauma resilience training and surveys police wellbeing across the UK.
After a gentle introduction to criminology as an undergraduate, Jess went on to become Director of Studies at the University of Cambridge for the Faculty of Social and Political Science at Lucy Cavendish College in 2003. She tutored undergraduate psychology for a further 3 years. In 2004, Jess left academia for more ‘hands-on’ work in civil protection and joined the management team of Cambridgeshire Police’s Critical Incident Personal Support Team. This included training volunteers to support victims and their families through mass and critical incidents.
After working in Preventing Violent Extremism in 2008, Jess relocated her research and designed a 150-participant neuropsychological study to investigate the role of DNA in trauma processing. The research has featured in The Lancet 2023, been published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2014, Police Professional November 2016, the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and the Journal of Clinical Medicine in 2017.
Jess is delighted to be a Research Associate and Principal Investigator at the University of Cambridge, working alongside Prof Brendan Burchell. Her work since 2017 includes:
- Working as a Research Associate and then as Director of Research at the charity Police Care UK, formerly the Police Dependants’ Trust. The charity funded collaborative research to develop the UK’s largest police wellbeing survey, which was the first to quantify the prevalence of PTSD and CPTSD in UK Police. This research was covered by the BBC, made international news and featured in several documentaries.
- Through Police Care UK, disseminating bespoke training to over 15,000 operational police across the UK in Trauma Impact Processing Techniques (TIPT). This offered bespoke modular courses for high-risk roles such as, Counter Terrorism and atypical digital and auditory trauma exposure, including Child Sexual Exploitation and Call Handling.
- Funded by Police Care UK and in association with the Police Federation of England and Wales, producing trauma new trauma exposure management tools, such as the UK’s first Police Traumatic Events Checklist. These now form an integral part of the National Wellbeing Service’s trauma support model in 2025.
Jess also advises nationally on trauma resilience having recently presented at the Home Affairs Select Committee (2024) as well as the Westminster All Party Parliamentary Working Group for Mindfulness in Defence & Policing), the Police Federation of England & Wales (PFEW) and the College of Policing. The project won the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Impact and Engagement in 2019 and is a REF2021 Case Study.
In 2021, Jess joined The Royal Foundation to work on developing new trauma support for emergency responders across the UK. Her first book, The Policing Mind: Trauma Resilience for a New Era, was published by Bristol University Policy Press in March 2022. Jess is also co-author of a new book, Mindful Soldier, due to be published in Autumn 2025.
