Max Taylor (psychologist)

Maxwell "Max" Taylor (born 19 April 1945) is a Forensic and Legal psychologist. His early work specialised in the study of terrorism but he also became involved in the study of sex offenders, and in the development of capacity building activities for disadvantaged children in conflict zones, returning later to the study of terrorism.

After earlier appointments in Wales, Canada and Northern Ireland, he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Psychology, at University College Cork a post he held from 1983 to 2005. In 2005, Taylor became Professor of International Relations and Director of E-Learning at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence University of St Andrews, where he subsequently became Director in 2009. He retired from this post in 2012. He is currently Visiting Professor in the Department of Security and Crime Sciences, University College, London.

In the period 1993 to 2004, Taylor developed the Child Studies Unit. This Unit grew out of work in Khartoum, Sudan, and later had technical offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Kigali, Rwanda, and during the Balkans War in Sarajevo (subsequently moving to Zenica). From 1994–96 he was a consultant to the UNICEF Special Representative to the Former Yugoslavia. The Child Studies Unit was primarily concerned with capacity building for disadvantaged children living in conflict zones.

In 1998 Taylor formed the COPINE Project ("Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe"): this was an EU funded research initiative which was originally developed in co-operation with the Paedophile Unit of the London Metropolitan Police. As part of the Project work, with colleagues he helped to develop the COPINE scale. The COPINE Scale is a typology to categorise child abuse images for use in both research and law enforcement. The COPINE Scale formed the basis of the UK Sentencing Advisory Commission sentencing guidelines on conviction of offenders. The ten-level typology was based on analysis of images available on websites and internet newsgroups. Other researchers developed similar ten-level scales. He has also written of the threat of virtual child pornography, materials which "appear" to involve minors.

In St. Andrews Taylor developed innovative elearning programmes in Terrorism Studies (Certificate in Terrorism Studies, and Diploma and M.Litt in Terrorism Studies). This built on and extended Taylor's work in developing the elearning undergraduate and graduate programmes in Information Technology offered by the National Distance Education Centre, Dublin where Taylor was Course Leader for the Social and Behavioural Sciences stream. A characteristic of the Terrorism Studies programmes was their focus on integration of theory with practise.

...
Wikipedia