Cardiff School of Social Sciences

Career Profile

Professor Tom Horlick-Jones is an independent scholar and consultant, currently based within the School. He has research degrees in Mathematics (M.Sc, Wales) and Sociology (PhD, Surrey). Over a period of almost twenty-five years he has specialised in investigating sociological and cross-disciplinary aspects of risk-related behaviour and decision-making processes. This experience includes a decade spent as a senior policy adviser in public sector administration. He previously held academic posts at the London School of Economics and the University of Surrey.

He has advised many organisations, including: the Environment Agency, European Commission, Health & Safety Executive, H.M. Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Home Office, the Post Office Group, Railtrack, Railway Safety & Standards Board, Science Museum, Welsh Assembly Government Concordat on Health & Social Care, and World Health Organization. In 1998, he was summoned to provide oral and written evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee inquiry into railway safety. In 2000, he was summoned to provide evidence to the Ladbroke Grove rail crash inquiry. During 2000-02, he acted as an adviser to the Mayor of London’s strategic review of the safety of the Notting Hill Carnival. In 2001-02. he was appointed (together with a health specialist) by the Economic & Social Research Council and Medical Research Council to carry out a research review on Risk and Health. In 2002-04, he led the independent, and officially accredited, evaluation of the GM Nation? public debate on the possible commercialisation of transgenic crops in the UK

He has produced over 100 publications, including some 50 refereed papers and chapters, numerous technical reports, and the books Natural Risk and Civil Protection (lead editor, Spon, 1995), Social Amplification of Risk: the Media and the Public (co-author, HSE Books, 2001) and The GM Debate: Risk, Politics and Public Engagement (lead author, Routledge, 2007).