Professor David Shemmings, OBE, PhD,  is the Director of the Attachment and Relationship-based Practice programme, Co-Director of the University of Kent’s Centre for Child Protection and Visiting  Professor of Child Protection Research at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Professor Shemmings is the author of more than 60 articles, books and chapters on relational-based practice, theory and research.

Professor Shemmings qualified as a teacher in 1974 at the University of Sussex and worked with traumatised children for a number of years before becoming a Senior Policy Adviser in services to children and families to the Director of Social Services in Essex, and then Deputy Director of Social Services in Southend. He then spent 17 years lecturing at the University of East Anglia before becoming Professor of Social Work Research at Middlesex University in 2005. He joined the University of Kent as Professor of Social Work in 2007. He was also Deputy Head of the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research from 2007-2010.