Dr Karen Evans is Senior Lecturer at the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool. Her work has focused, although not exclusively, on communities in excluded neighbourhoods and their responses to marginalisation and deprivation. From the early 1990s this focus on the urban experience took Karen into research which was more criminological in nature as the fear of crime and victimisation increased in many neighbourhoods. Karen has published in the following areas: urban transformations, community and cyberspace, crime and community safety, community participation and experiences of victimisation.