Cardiff School of Dentistry

Research Theme

Applied Clinical Research & Public Health

Research Group

Violence & Society

Professor Jonathan Shepherd CBE FMedSci directs the Cardiff University Violence and Society Research Group. His research on clinical decisions and community violence has made many contributions to clinical and public policy and legislation. His discoveries resulted in a prototype UK crime reduction partnership which he continues to chair and which was used as a model in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act; the establishment of the pioneering Universities' Police Science Institute; a prototype data sharing model for violence prevention which was adopted in the 2008 UK violence reduction strategy; and a prototype care pathway for victims of violence. His surveys, laboratory work and field experiments on glass injury resulted in a switch from annealed to tempered glassware in the UK licensed trade in the late 1990s. His research also prompted the influential Royal College of Surgeons of England guideline published in 1996 and the historic first National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) technology appraisal on prophylactic removal of third molars (wisdom teeth) in 2000. As a result of these guidelines and his advocacy for selective surgery, third molar removal declined substantially: 30,000 fewer operations were carried out in the NHS in 2003 compared to 1996. He won the 2008 Stockholm Criminology Prize (the first UK recipient of what The Times described as "the equivalent of a Nobel prize"); is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists reflecting his contributions to alcohol misuse and traumatic stress treatment services, of the College of Emergency Medicine and of the Faculty of Public Health at the Royal College of Physicians. He has served as vice chair of the national charity Victim Support and is an elected member of Council and Trustee of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He sits on the Wales Assembly Government public services ministerial advisory group and as the clinical member of the Whitehall alcohol strategy group, helped develop and deliver the national 2007 strategy, Safe Sensible Social.