Tilley, Nick

(b. 1947, Essex, England). M.Sc., London School of Economics; B.Sc. Sociology, London University.

Tilley is Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University, England, and Visiting Professor at University College London in the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science. Since 1992, he has also worked with the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate as Research Consultant. As a result of this work, an annual prize for problem-oriented policing, the Tilley Award, has been named after him and funded by the Home Office since 1998.

His primary contributions to the field of evaluation have been the conceptualization and explication of realist evaluation and the use of evaluation in the field of criminology. Primary influences for his work are Karl Popper and his writings on the open society, piecemeal social engineering, situational logic, and falsification; realist philosophy of science in the work of Roy Bhaskar and Rom Harré; rational choice [Page 421]theory and the significance of mechanisms in social explanation, especially in the work of Jon Elster and Raymond Boudon; middle-range theorizing as discussed by Robert Merton; and problem solving and situational crime prevention, notably as described by Herman Goldstein and Ron Clarke.

He has published widely in criminology and on realist methodology in evaluation, both for practitioners and for academics. He is the coauthor of Realistic Evaluation (with Ray Pawson) and Editor of Evaluation for Crime Prevention. He has contributed to, among other periodicals, the British Journal of Criminology; Knowledge and Policy; Crime and Justice: A Review of Research; Evaluation; and the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. Recent research projects have included an examination of police uses of forensic science, an evaluation of a program aiming to reduce crime against small businesses, and participation in action projects aiming to implement problem-oriented policing in Leicestershire and to reduce shootings in Manchester. He is active in many organizations and has served as President of the U.K. Evaluation Society.