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John Drury

John Drury is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at Sussex University. His research interests include: empowerment and identity change in collective action; crowds and crowding; and mass emergency behaviour. In each case, he is concerned with the role of shared social identity in providing people with practical and emotional support in potentially dangerous crowd events. His research has included studies of the UK anti-roads movement, the poll tax riot, the July 7th London bombings, the Hillsborough disaster, and the 2010 earthquake in Chile. He is currently supervising a PhD project on crowd safety at the annual Hajj to Mecca. He has worked with the emergency services, resilience organizations and crowd safety professionals, and his research has informed the guidance of the Department of Health and other organizations.