Maureen Taylor

Dr Maureen Taylor is an experienced forensic investigator and criminologist. She has held a range of positions in forensic investigation, financial investigation and intelligence analysis and has worked with offenders in community and custodial settings. Maureen has taught at UK universities for 17 years, teaching criminology, policing and investigation and is an experienced trainer, designing and delivering training to practitioners in a range of disciplines. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University and is an active researcher in the fields of missing people, gender based violence, human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, public protection policing, and homicide investigation. Her PhD thesis used social network analysis to explore the groups and networks involved in child sexual exploitation.

Maureen is passionate about driving change in the way we understand and respond to long term missing and unidentified people. She joined Locate International in 2020 as Chief Operating Officer, assisting its founders in developing Locate’s operational capacity and designing and delivering Locate’s modular training programme, one of the largest community volunteer training programmes in Europe. Maureen also founded and directed the Scottish Cold Case Unit at Glasgow Caledonian University working closely with Police Scotland in the review of unidentified people cases.

Maureen was instrumental in the development of Quest and is continuing her role as Head of Quest Development with a vision of enhancing the investigation of long term missing and unidentified people through collaboration and effective information management, and improving our understanding of the causes and impact of long term missing on families and communities.