Emma Parkinson is a Course Director at Coventry University and specialises in crowded places and emergency management. She leads on postgraduate programmes in risk, emergency planning, and crowd safety, and her research interests include the development of resilience in the delivery of safe crowded places, the use of simulation for training and exercise, and public-private sector interoperability. She is mid-way through a Professional Doctorate examining the impacts of temporary organisational and management structures on the safe delivery of crowded places events.
Prior to academia, Emma managed the UK’s largest dedicated stewarding organisation, and supplements her academic career with high-level practical experience of issues relating to operationalising crowd safety plans and managing large-scale security staffing deployments. She maintains her practice in crowd safety management and provides consultancy services to government, national and international music festivals, major sports organisation, cultural and street events, and large-scale protest. She was the co-author of the industry’s post-Covid guidance to the UK music festival sector and sits as part of the multi-agency West Midlands Training Exercising and Learning Group.
