Martin Dorchester became Chief Executive of includem in March 2018. Previously Martin was the Group Chief Executive of the David MacBrayne Group, including CALMAC Ferries, Argyll Ferries Ltd and Solent Gateway.

In a career spanning 30 years Martin has operated nationally and internationally with organisations covering logistics, technology and finance. As CEO of Dixon's B2B operation Martin built up the largest Apple reseller business in the UK as well as developing a £100m public sector business. Martin was part of the team that brought the 5 radio authorities together to create Ofcom and worked with the London Borough of Hackney on developing its infrastructure for the 2012 Olympics. Martin is also a keen lecturer and academic and has written a number of papers covering areas as diverse as CSR and Emotional Intelligence in Management Development and more recently on children and young people.

Martin is a Co-chair of the Independent Care Review and a Non-executive Director of CCPS. He has held a number of non-executive roles including: Non-executive Director of Traveline Scotland, The Sailors' Orphan Society of Scotland and most recently Transport for Wales. He is a supporter of Social and Community Business and Chaired Firstport Ltd, a start-up funding organisation for social enterprises.

Lorraine Gillies is an independent freelance consultant with a portfolio that currently includes delivery of Planet Youth in Scotland – a preventative upstream approach focused around school communities, development of Crofthead Farm Community Development Trust and supporting the West Lothian Community Race Forum.

She was previously the Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Community Safety Network – a professional membership network for community safety practitioners and agencies across Scotland.

Her background includes executive level roles in West Lothian Council, where she led the development of an outcomes approach to council services; Audit Scotland, and included responsibility for the National Audit on Self Directed Support and creation of the Community Empowerment and Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Boards and extensive work with charities including Cyrenians, Scottish Drugs Forum, and Foursquare Scotland

She is a pioneer of flexible working, has successfully implemented a four-day week and promotes trauma-informed practising workplaces.

She is the co-chair of the Independent Working Group on Antisocial Behaviour, a Director of the Donaldson Trust – the National Centre for Neurodiversity, the Chair of the Scheme – a West Lothian recovery charity and is a founder member of The Wedge – a web resource for neurominority women in work.

Mark has decades of experience in the field of community safety including as a Police Officer where he spent extensive periods in both neighbourhood policing (specifically in the field of anti-social behaviour), intelligence and many other aspects of policing.

He is a qualified teacher and has used his ability to communicate to train a vast number of student Police Officers and community safety partners. Throughout his career he has used innovative solutions to assist victims of crime, including a bespoke project to help reduce knife crime and anti-social behaviour. Mark has received Chief Constables commendations as well as numerous Area Commanders commendations for outstanding public service and for his ability to promote partnership working.

Mark has led on projects which have seen effective solutions to problems in his area of the East Midlands including effectively targeting rural criminals, organised criminal gangs and shoplifters where his operation and organisation led to a 68% reduction in offending. He believes passionately that all victims deserve to be treated equally with respect and dignity.

In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his wife, son and grandchildren and his hobbies are singing and travelling with his wife.

Will is one of the original members of the SVRU and has served with the unit since its foundation in 2005.

He has been involved in many of the unit’s key projects including the development of the homicide/deaths database, gangs programme CIRV (Community Initiative to Reduce Violence), injury surveillance, Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), a range of employability/desistance programmes as well as providing much of the research strategy in support of the violence reduction strategy for Scotland.

Will specialises in behavioural and geographic analysis of violence and received a number of awards from the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) and the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) for his work. Will is a visiting Professor at University of Strathclyde.

Lesley McAra is an alumna of the University of Edinburgh and of the Open University. She began her career as a researcher in the Scottish Office where she led a major programme of research evaluating social work criminal justice services. In 1995, she joined the University of Edinburgh as Lecturer in Criminology, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2005, and to the Chair of Penology in 2009. Her inaugural lecture can be listened to here.

Lesley is currently the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH). She is also Assistant Principal Community Relations - academic lead for the local impact component of University of Edinburgh strategy.

Lesley was the inaugural Director of the Edinburgh Futures Institute, a new cross-University initiative committed to radical forms of inter-disciplinarity (bringing together the arts, humanities and social sciences with data science, engineering, the natural sciences and medicine), co-design and coproduction (empowering and working in partnership with communities, as well as collaborating with industry and governments), and data driven innovation.

A former Dean of the School of Law, Lesley was the first woman to be appointed to that post. In 2014 she founded (with alumna, Karina McTeague) the Leadership Foundation for Women in Law. She was also the founder of the Empirical Legal Research Network, a cross-University forum aimed at facilitating partnership-working across different disciplines, pooling expertise and functioning as a resource bank for researchers at all levels of career

In 2018, Lesley was elected as President of the European Society of Criminology and, following her term of office, she continued to play a major role in the Society as part of its Executive Board (in 2021) and as a member of the working groups on Juvenile Justice and Crime, Criminal Justice and the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Lesley’s research interests lie in the general areas of the sociology of punishment and the sociology of law and deviance. Particular interests include: youth crime and juvenile justice; gender justice and community well-being; the politics of crime control; and comparative criminal justice. She is Co-Director (with Susan McVie) of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a prize-winning longitudinal programme of research on pathways into and out of offending for a cohort of around 4,300 young people. Funded by grants from the ESRC (R00237157, R000239150), the Nuffield Foundation and the Scottish Government, Study findings have been utilised in penal reform campaigns both nationally and internationally and have formed the principal evidence base for a range of youth justice policies in Scotland, including the ‘Whole System Approach’ and the decision to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility. Lesley is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Anti-social Behaviour and the Community Confidence Group, set up as part of the Scottish Government’s review of the age of criminal responsibility in Scotland. She has also been a member of the Youth Justice Board’s Academic Liaison Network (Ministry of Justice, UK Government). A former Editor-in-Chief (with Ursula Kilkelly) of the journal Youth Justice, Lesley is currently Co-Editor (with Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna) of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology.

In 2013, Lesley was a joint winner (with Susan McVie) of the Howard League for Penal Reform Research Medal which celebrates high quality research from ‘new thinking’ and ‘radical researchers’ who have changed penal policy and practice. This was followed in 2016 with the Chancellor’s award for research impact which honours colleagues at the University of Edinburgh whose outstanding research has made a demonstrable contribution to society. And in 2019, she was the winner (with Susan McVie) of the ESRC prize for Outstanding Public Policy Impact. She was awarded a CBE, in the New Year's Honours List 2018, for services to Criminology and elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.

Lesley’s previous teaching experience has covered several criminology courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level including the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice. She welcomes applications from doctoral candidates in any area of her expertise.