Staff Profile

Nicole Adams-Quackenbush is a legal psychology and criminological researcher. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada, Nicole completed her BSc (Psychology Honours) at Dalhousie University with a thesis titled "Understanding the Police Caution and Police Questioning". Nicole then completed her MSc (Applied Legal Psychology) at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada with her thesis titled "The Effects of Cognitive Load and Lying Types on Deception Cues".

Nicole completed a double doctorate from the University of Portsmouth (2018) and the University of Maastricht (2019) through an Erasmus Mundus joint doctoral programme offered by The House of Legal Psychology. Her doctoral dissertation is titled "The Influence of Guilt Presumptive Language on Investigative Interviewing Outcomes". Nicole's specific area of expertise involves elicitation and disclosure of information in investigative and security settings. 

Nicole is also the founder of an international research group, Research in Investigative Interviewing, Policing, & Law (RIIPL), that is comprised of researchers from the UK, the Netherlands, France, Canada, and the USA. In addition to research collaborations, RIIPL's main focus is student research mentorship and development. Students that join RIIPL participate in a number of tasks at every stage of the research process and receive training for tasks that are not generally covered in Research Methods modules through the Research Training Toolkit (e.g., transcription, interviewing, cleaning and screening data, etc). 

Nicole also has over 20 years experience with: Programme evaluation, process improvement, people management and supervision, training and program creation. She also holds credentials for public speaking, presenting, and evaluation through Toastmasters International.

Nicole currently runs two programmes of research:

The Investigative Interviewing and Interviewer Aptitude projects focus on conceptualising and testing innovative and evidence-based approaches to the way law enforcement and security organisations elicit information from civilians, agents, and informants. Current projects involve:

• Building trust over various forms of media
• Using language to facilitate information disclosure in interviewees
• Linguistic evaluation of investigative interviews 

The Perceptions of Justice and Therapeutic initiatives in the Criminal Legal System projects focus on how the public and legal decision-makers use their beliefs about justice, crime, and offending to influence their views and subsequent decisions regarding: mentally ill offenders, gangs & knife crime, problem-solving courts, restorative practices, and punishment. Current projects involve:

• Situating perceptions of justice within legal and forensic psychology 
• Punishment for vulnerable offenders
• Public perceptions of restorative practices
• Perceptions of violence reduction initiatives
• Programme evaluation

Nicole currently teaches on the following modules: 

PSY1007 - History of Psychology

PSY2019 - Research Skills and Development (Module Leader)

PSY3030 - Foundations in Forensic Psychology (module Leader)

PSY8055 - Investigative Psychology & Forensic Interviewing

PSY8061 - Advanced Research Methods I (Factor Analysis)

PSY8062 - Advanced Research Methods II (Content Analysis)

PSY8059 - Forensic Psychology Project

• Adams-Quackenbush NM, Vrij A, Horselenberg R, Satchell LP, van Koppen PJ. Articulating guilt? The influence of guilt presumption on interviewer and interviewee behaviour. Current Psychology 2022, 41, 2139–2151.
• Adams-Quackenbush NM, Massie R, Caulfield L. West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit Evaluation: Evaluation of currently commissioned interventions and place-based pilots. 2020. West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit Evaluation.
• Adams-Quackenbush NM. Catch 22 Wolverhampton Violence Reduction Unit Evaluation: Preliminary Report. University of Wolverhampton, 2019.
• Adams-Quackenbush NM, Horselenberg R, Tomas F, van Koppen P. Detecting Guilt Presumption in a Police-Suspect Interview: An Evaluation of the Questions in a Dutch Murder Case. Investigative Interviewing: Research and Practice 2019, 10(1), 37-60.
• Adams-Quackenbush NM, Horselenberg R, Hubert J, Vrij A, van Koppen PJ. Interview expectancies: awareness of potential biases influences behaviour in interviewees. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 2019, 26(1), 150-166.
• Adams-Quackenbush NM, Horselenberg R, van Koppen PJ. Where Bias Begins: a Snapshot of Police Officers’ Beliefs About Factors that Influence the Investigative Interview with Suspects. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 2019, 34, 373-380.
• Adams-Quackenbush NM, Horselenberg R, Vrij A, van Koppen PJ. Detecting bias in police interviews with suspects: A linguistic approach. In: International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG) Conference. 2018, Porto, Portugal: Portugese Catholic University.
• Hudson CA, Satchell LP, Adams-Quackenbush NM. It takes two: the round-robin methodology for investigative interviewing research. Frontiers in Psychology 2018, 9, 2181.
• Patry MW, Connors CJ, Adams-Quackenbush NM, Smith SM. When Both Sides are Mistaken: Layperson and Legal Professionals’ Misconceptions of Canadian Suspects’ Legal Rights Upon Arrest. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 2017, 32(1), 56-65.
• Ennis AR, McLeod P, Watt MC, Campbell MA, Adams-Quackenbush NM. The role of gender in mental health court admission and completion. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 2016, 58, 1-30.
• Campbell MA, Adams-Quackenbush NM, Ennis A, Canales D. Prospective evaluation of the Nova Scotia Mental Health Court: An examination of short-term outcomes [Special Report]. New Brunswick: Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, University of New Brunswick, 2015.
• Adams-Quackenbush NM. The effects of cognitive load and lying types on deception cues [Thesis]. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Saint Mary's University, 2015.
• Patry MW, Smith SM, Adams N. Recent Supreme Court of Canada rulings on criminal defendants' right to counsel. Psychology, Crime & Law 2014, 20(8), 741-755.