Lorna is an honours graduate in Criminology and a serving police officer in the British Police Service. She is a Police Search Adviser and spent eight years on a full-time advanced search team.
In January 2021 she was awarded her PhD at the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee for her research that built on her experiences of body recoveries in water on the Police Specialist Search Unit. Her unit undertook search and recovery in hazardous places that required additional personal protective equipment and included police diving, marine operations, swift water operations, rope access, confined space entry and search, major incident search as well as disaster victim recovery and identification. She has presented at national and international conferences to organisations working in the field of search and recovery.
My Motivation for this Study
I am reluctant to write about me because this project is not about me, it's about the people we serve.
In 2007 I was selected to lead the Specialist Search Unit. My unit was
a full time team that did all search and recovery in hazardous places that
required additional personal protective equipment. This included police
diving, marine operations, swift water operations, rope access, confined
space entry and search, major incident search as well as disaster victim
recovery and identification. 
I was both a supervisory and an operational
member of the team and I also became qualified as a Police Search Adviser
which meant that I was involved in a variety of search incidents.
I’ve been to so many searches where family members would come to watch the search and wait for their loved one to be returned to them.
On one particular search a young boy had drowned in a lake, it happened in the afternoon and we went to the scene and dived until the early hours looking for the body.
One of the things I really love about this study is that it links like-minded people who have a common purpose.
We had to leave the scene to get some rest as we had been on duty for about 18 hours. When we returned at first light the boy’s Dad was still at the side of the lake; he had stayed there through the night waiting for his son to be returned. We continued searching and recovered the body some hours later. It was one of the many very sad things I experienced whilst on the Unit.
One of the things I really love about this study is that it links like-minded people who have a common purpose. Having worked in search and recovery for many years I know how physically and mentally difficult it can be. I have the utmost respect for people who work in this field – many of them voluntarily. I really enjoy interacting with and sharing ideas and knowledge with all of the participants. I can best explain my feelings about this by a blog I wrote some time ago – at the time I wrote it I didn’t think anyone would get to read it but if you want to you can read it HERE .
That's enough about me, but I do hope that this study encourages you to join in, contact me and share your thoughts. Thank you for visiting my site.