Dr Mark Freestone is Chief Education and Training Officer and Dean of
Postgraduate Studies at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
, having previously served as Professor of Mental Health and Director of
Education at Queen Mary University of London's Wolfson Institute of
Population Health. He works principally in forensic psychiatry and
psychology, conducting epidemiological and health services research into the
efficacy of treatments for offenders, and has spent over 15 years working
within the High Secure prison estate and at Rampton and Broadmoor
Special Hospitals as part of the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder
programme — encountering some of the UK's most notorious offenders along
the way. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at East London NHS
Foundation Trust and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, and has advised
NHS England on forensic mental health policy, as well as consulting for the BBC
— most notably as the psychiatrist behind the psychological authenticity of Killing Eve's
Villanelle. His research spans the epidemiology of violence, causal inference networks for violence
risk management, and the clinical sub-typing of
personality disorder and psychopathy, work that culminated in his acclaimed 2020 book, Making a Psychopath:
My Journey into Seven Dangerous Minds — a first-hand account of the real cases that shaped his understanding
of what actually makes a psychopath.