People

A list of our members is below. Click on their names to see full details.

Name	University
Adam Crawford	University of Leeds, England
Adam White	University of Sheffield, England
Alexandra Abello-Colak	The London School of Economics and Political Science, England
Alice Hill	University of Leeds, England
Alison Wakefield	University of Portsmouth, England
Amy Humphrey	University of Dundee, Scotland
Anders Stenström	Stockholm University
Andrej Soltar	University of Maribor, Slovenia
Anna Barker	University of Leeds, England
Anne-Marie Singh	Ryerson University, Canada
Annette Hübschle	University of Cape Town, South Africa
Anthony Amicelle	University of Montreal, Canada
Arun Som	Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Bas van Stokkom	Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Benoît Dupont	University of Montreal, Canada
Bernhard Frevel	University of Münster, Germany
Branko Lobnikar	University of Maribor, Slovenia
Craig Paterson	Sheffield Hallam University, England
Cathrine Filstad	College/University of Tromsø, Norway
Chad Whelan	Deakin University, Australia
Clarissa Meerts	Vrije University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Cleber Lopes	Londrina State University, Brazil
Clifford Shearing	Universities of Griffith, Cape Town, Montreal and New South Wales
Conor O’Reilly	University of Leeds, England
David Churchill	University of Leeds, England
David Sausdal	University of Copenhagen, Denmark
David Wall	University of Leeds, England
Dennis Goldig	University of Münster, Germany
Dolores Janiewski	Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington
Eboe Hutchful	Wayne State University in Detroit, USA
Eleanor Abbott	University of Leeds, England
Elke Devroe	Leiden University, The Netherlands
Elsa Saarikkomäki	University of Turku, Finland
Emilio Ayos	University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Emma Forsgren	University of Leeds, England
Emma Gritt	University of Leeds, England
Erika Robb Larkins	San Diego State University, USA
Eva-Katharina Dinche	Ghent University, Berlin
Fabio Scarpello	Murdoch University, Australia
Francois Bonnet	York University, England
Gilles Favarel-Garrigues	Centre d'etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI-Sciences po), France
Gorazd Meško	University of Maribor, Slovenia
Hans Boutellier	Vrije University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Iain Britton	University of Northampton, England
Ian Loader	University of Oxford, England
Jack Greene	Northeastern University, USA
Jacques de Maillard	University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin, France
James Sheptycki	York University, England
Jenny Fleming	University of Southampton, England
Jethro Norman	University of Leeds, England
Julie Berg	University of Glasgow, Scotland
Justin Ellis	University of Newcastle, Australia
Karen Bullock	University of Surrey, England
Karine Côté-Boucher	The University of Montreal, Canada
Kevin Walby	University of Winnipeg, Canada
Klára Kerezsi	The National University of Public Service, Hungary
Larissa Engelmann	Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland
László Christián	National University of Public Service, Hungary
Layla Skinns	University of Sheffield, England
Lena Opfermann	Durham University, England
Liam O'Shea	The London School of Economics, England
Logan Puck	Salen State University, USA
Lucas Melagaco	Vrije University of Brussels, Belgium
Mahesh Nalla	Michigan state University, USA
Marc Cools	Ghent University, Belgium
Marc Schuilenburg	VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Marieke de Goede	University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Marina Hiller Foshaugen	University of Oslo, Norway
Mark Button	University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth
Marleen Easton	Ghent University, Belgium
Martin Nøkleberg	University of Oslo, Norway
Mary Fraser	The Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research, Scotland
Matt Bowden	University of Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Matthew Callender	University of Northampton, England
Matthew Millings	Liverpool John Moores University, England
Megan O'Neill	University of Dundee, Scotland
Melissa Pepper	University of Greenwich, England
Mette Volquartzen	University of Oslo, Norway
Nathalie Hirschmann	University of Münster, Germany
Ola Kazeem Falodun	Technological University Dublin, Ireland
Philip Stenning	Griffin University, Australia
Pieter Leloup	Ghent University, Belgium
Randy Lippert	University of Windsor, Canada
Richard Hill	Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington
Rick Sarre	University of South Australia, Australia
Ronald van Steden	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Sabina Frederic	The National University of Quilmes, Argentina
Samuel Moreira	University of Porto, Portugal
Samuel Tanner	University of Montreal, Canada
Sean Butcher	University of Leeds, England
Sophie Nakueira	Max Planck Institute for Anthropology, Germany
Stuart Lister	University of Leeds, England
Synnøve Ø. Jahnsen	Norwegian Research Centre, Norway
Tessa Diphoorn	Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Thomas Friis Søgaard	Aarhus University, Denmark
Trevor Bradley	Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Vanessa Barker	Stockholm University, Sweden
Wilbur Miller	Stony Brook University, USA
Yarin Eski	University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

 

Adam Crawford, University of Leeds, England

Email: a.crawford@leeds.ac.uk

Adam Crawford is the Director of the Leeds Social Sciences Institute (LSSI) at the University of Leeds, where he is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He is also Director of the N8 Policing Research Partnership, a collaboration between the N8 universities and policing partners in the north of England which has been working to foster and promote the evidence base in policing and to enable the co-production of policing research (since 2013). His research has focused on policing, urban security, the governance of public space, restorative justice and victims of crime. He has a long-standing interest in the pluralisation of policing, the role of non-state actors in the production of security and networked relations in the provision of urban safety. He is currently exploring comparative development across Europe and in Argentina.

Adam White, University of Sheffield, England

Email: adam.white@sheffield.ac.uk

My research focuses on four interconnected themes: (i) the rise of the private security and private military industries in the postwar era; (ii) corresponding issues of governance, regulation and legitimacy in the security and military sectors; (iii) the conceptual and empirical connections between war and crime; and (iv) the changing nature of state-market relations. These interests are multidisciplinary, lying at the intersection of criminology, politics, international relations and socio-legal studies.  At the present time (2019), I working on the following projects: a comparison of police-private security relations in Mexico and the United Kingdom; a comparison of private security regulation in Belgium and the United Kingdom; and the demobilisation of private military contractors.

Anders Stenström, Stockholm University

Email: anders.stenstrom@criminology.su.se

My main interest in plural policing is on the ways power relations shape policing practices. I focus on how policing actors manage the ambiguity between on the one hand being responsibilized and assuming responsibility for crime control, and on the other being responsible for other goals, such as promoting trust in, and the legitimacy and survival of the insurance institution. In my thesis I argue that power relations provide opportunities to ensure that organizational goals are not endangered, while at the same time maintaining the public image that crime is being controlled. In contrast with existing research, the thesis shows that the law and the state – analytical categories that existing research, and particularly post-Foucauldian approaches, tend to reject or avoid – are critical to the plural policing of fraud. It is further suggested that scholars need to pay more attention to the way different technologies of power shape relationships between the actors involved in plural policing and their definitions of their own roles. Previously, I have also examined other examples of plural policing such anti-money laundering regimes, Sweden’s multi-agency approach to police serious organized crime;, and measures against extortion of private business owners.

Annette Hübschle, University of Cape Town

Email: annette.hubschle@uct.ac.za

My research focuses on the governance of safety and security with a specific focus on illegal wildlife economies and the future of earth systems, as well as the interface between licit and illicit economies and criminal networks. Concerning plural policing, one of my research projects explores why rural communities might participate in illegal and legal wildlife economies and how alternative, community-oriented strategies can build community resilience against organised wildlife crimes. Another project explores public-private-community forms of policing protected areas and wildlife. I am a senior research fellow in the Global Risk Governance programme in the Public Law Department at the University of Cape Town. I am also a member of the Evolving Securities Initiative and the Network on Intelligence and Security Practices in African Countries.

Arun Som, Ph.D Candidate, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT B)

Email: arunsom@iitb.ac.in and arunsom97@gmail.com

Policing - is a quite understudied area in India, remains at the centre of debates on police abuses of power, accountability and transparency. My interests in Plural policing explores the emerging technologically induced Policing In India, with an aim to highlight the pluralisation of Policing in India. Police which unravels through the levels of informality and secrecy as an integral practice across the world is quite important to be studied for building an understanding on the location and manifestation of power and abuses by the Police. So through the approaches of legal anthropology my study is attempting to understand it combining with ethnography observations. My research focuses on to speak on the transition of Police as a force to an Institution rather an organisation of the state-of more diversified aims using of technologically induced Policing.

With the help of legal Anthropological analysis of Police bureaucracy it is studying the language of Policing-manifesting through the Police executive orders. And that is trying to make an understanding of the state ‘need’ and ‘myth’ of Policing through such orders. Further, looking to explore the Politics of technological order which is antagonistic to the legal and social order is an important objectives of the study to critic the blurring boundaries of Policing. It looks at Policing with a clear difference in order Unlike in the West, where it is a racialize capitalist social order- and in India social order is highly dominated by the caste based hierarchal order. These analysis are important to understand the power economy and geographies within Policing practices. And with the help of historical anthropological analysis it aims to highlight the Policing colluding with the dominant social order.

Conor O’Reilly, University of Leeds, England

Email: C.OReilly@leeds.ac.uk

My research interest in plural policing centres on the intersection between processes of pluralization, commodification and transnationalisation of policing. Previously, I have conducted research into the pluralization of high policing, processes of state-corporate symbiosis in the transnational policing sphere, as well as the branding of public policing and state security models. My research regarding plural policing has entailed fieldwork across the Anglophone and Lusophone policing communities.

I am currently a Co-Investigator on the ESRC Transformative project: ‘Date Justice in Mexico’s Multiveillant Society: How Big Data is Reshaping the Struggle for Human Rights and Political Freedoms’. By relocating the focus of high policing research from the orthodox settings of democratic states and authoritarian regimes, this project will examine high policing action in the more fluid political reality of Mexico.

Cleber Lopes, Londrina State University; Brazil

Email: clopes@uel.br

I am a political scientist whose studies of plural policing are based on contributions from the fields of criminology, sociology and public policy. My research focusses on three topics: (i) security networks; (ii) the politics of private security and its outcomes; and (3) the powers and accountability of private security industry. Using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methodologies, my analyses of these three topics seek to evaluate the explanatory capacity of concepts and theories on plural policing outside the Anglosphere, especially in Brazil and Spanish-Speaking Latin America. In the Laboratory of Security Governance Studies, my students and I are currently conducting ethnographic research on state and non-state actors who govern security in the night-time economy of a midsize city in Brazil, and using Social Network Analysis to characterise the security network that operates in Latin America’s largest port complex, the Port of Santos.

Clifford Shearing

Email: clifford.shearing1@gmail.com

Clifford Shearing holds Professorships at the universities of Griffith, Cape Town and Montreal and a position at the University of New South Wales.   His research has focused on the governance of safety and security, with a particular focus on the role of public and private authorities and providers; his current work is focused on shifts in risk landscapes.  

David Churchill, University of Leeds, England

Email: d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk

My research focuses on the history of policing and security in modern Britain. Adopting a plural policing perspective, I have studied the roles of the public police and the civilian public in responding to property crime in Victorian cities, focus both on everyday practices of crime control and the cultural norms which underpinned them. This work has sought to challenge the longstanding view that the formation of the ‘new police’ in the nineteenth century effected the monopolisation of crime control by the state. I have also worked on the development of the security industry in the nineteenth century, focusing especially on security hardware (lock and safe) companies. This work has further documented the role of non-state agencies in responding to crime, as well as illustrating important shifts in perceptions of criminality and security that followed the emergence of new security technologies. I’m currently looking to extend this research on the history of security and the security industry into and through the twentieth century, to offer a long-term perspective on the commodification of security and its social consequences, including its evolving relationship with public policing.

David Sausdal, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

My interest in plural policing shoots out of my ethnographic research of transnational policing. Through fieldwork among Danish as well Spanish police detectives engaged in policing transnational crimes (such a drug trafficking, human trafficking, human smuggling, and organised property crimes), I have acquired a rare insight into the everyday workings of such investigations. What this has shown me, amongst other things, is that a central part of transnational policing is the on-going collaboration between public and private actors. Put differently, among detectives investigating transnational crimes it is believed to be essential, as a Spanish detective straightforwardly put it, ’to build trust and relations with private and civil actors. We need to do so as this is the only way to match the mobility and complexity of transnational crime’. Put differently, among transnational policing actors, there is as such a general understanding that growing collaborations with various private actors (be it private security firms, postal services, social services, tax agents, NGOs or civic society) are not only useful but indispensable in their “fight” against an otherwise increasing amount of border-crossing criminal activity. Bearing this in mind, it may be said that my particular research into plural policing focuses on the intersections of global/transnational policing vis-à-vis plural policing – focusing on both how and why they interact, and sometimes even amalgamate, and the consequences this has for our theories about policing and, not least, for society.

David Wall, University of Leeds, England

David S. Wall is a Criminologist who conducts interdisciplinary research into CyberCrimes in the Cloud, Ransomware, Policing Cybercrime, and Organised Cybercrime and Cybersecurity. He is currently researching the impact of Big Data Crimes upon the cybersecurity threat landscape and is modelling the cybercrime ecosystem for various research projects. He works with economists, psychologists, lawyers, computer scientists and software engineers on AI and ML as well as various agencies across Europe and their various practitioner and policy communities. David has been a member of various Governmental working groups on Cybercrime and more recently he has worked with the UNODC Expert Groups on various cybercrime initiatives.

Dennis Goldig, University of Münster, Germany

His research interests are amongst others the analysis of plural policing from an economic point of view.

He currently works within the BMBF funded junior research group PluS-i (www.plus-i.de/en) and deals with aspects of the efficiency of policing. In particular, he focuses on efficiency measurement of German security authorities and private security companies by using Data Envelopment Analysis as well as measuring and analyzing citizen’s stated willingness to pay for policing services in urban areas in Germany.

Elsa Saarikkomäki, University of Turku, Finland

Email: elsa.saarikkomaki@utu.fi

I am currently conducting a research project on legitimacy of private policing in Faculty of Law, University of Turku. I hold a PhD in sociology (2017, University of Helsinki) and I have previously worked at Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy (University of Helsinki). My inspiration for conceptualizing plural policing has derived from studying empirically the everyday experiences of security. I am interested in approaches of plural policing, procedural justice, narrative criminology, qualitative and quantitative methods. My research has mainly focused on young people’s encounters with police and security guards. The studies have compared understandings of public vs. private policing. I am also interested in comparative research, I am a member of Police Stops network (EU COST) and together with Nordic researchers we led a project about experiences of policing among ethnic minority youth (EPEN). Most recently, we published about ethnic minorities’ experiences of security guard interventions, which made them feel discriminated and unwelcome in the city spaces.

At the moment (2020), I am conducting research on a new work format where the security guards, operating in shopping malls in Finland, are trained by youth workers to enhance these relations. Overall, my current project studies how the role and legitimacy of private security is negotiated in legislative processes, by policing agents themselves and by the objects of policing.

Emilio Ayos, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Dr. Emilio Ayos is Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and Researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) at the Gino Germani Research Institute (UBA) where he serves as Director of the Comparative Research Program. His research has focused on the study of the link between crime control and the field of social policy, analyzing the development of social crime prevention programs and their tensions and overlaps with social assistance programs for young people. The comparative perspective is one of the key interests of his research, both concerning security and to the more general issue of welfare regulations.

Jacques de Maillard, University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin

Email: demaillard@cesdip.fr

Jacques de Maillard is Professor of Political Science at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin, deputy-director of the Cesdip. His interests lie in the questions of local governance of security and the comparative study of policing in Western countries. Concerning plural policing, his more specific interests concern the pluralisation of public policing in European cities (with an interest in the styles of policing, governance issues and political conditions of these policy developments). He has a particular interest in developing comparative research.

Julie Berg, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Email: julie.berg@glasgow.ac.uk

My research interests include state and non-state policing, and plural or polycentric security governance. I am principally interested in the nature of plurality in security governance through the mapping out of state and non-state nodes within increasingly pluralized environments and the particular role of the private sector (for instance, private security and private intelligence) in these environments. In light of the emergence of new global harms or harmscapes, I am interested in how policing in its pluralized form adapts to these new harms. Furthermore, I am interested in the contextual factors that impact on plural policing (for instance, the shifting nature of public space, power relations, and public policing provision); the impacts of new and advanced technologies on collaborative and pluralized policing; as well as the impacts of plural policing on achieving inclusive and equitable security governance in line with a public or common good (with a particular focus on legitimacy, accountability, and democratic security provision). In line with these interests, I co-lead the Evolving Securities Initiative (ESI) global network, which comprises scholars and security professionals focusing on the generation of knowledge about existing and emerging harmscapes and associated security governance developments. I also run the ESI’s Glasgow Hub (ESI@GLA) which focuses on exploring the impacts of new risk harmscapes on security institutions, collaborative arrangements, and democratic policing. Further to this, I co-lead the Network on Intelligence and Security Practices in African Countries (NISPAC) which is an interdisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners focused on exploring the role of  security and intelligence services (state and non-state) in the African context, thereby addressing deficits in knowledge on this topic.

Justin Ellis, University of Newcastle, Australia

Digital technologies have transformed public scrutiny of police transgression. Yet they can go only so far in holding police to account. The main focus of my current research in relation to plural policing is the scrutiny of public order policing through sousveillance – ‘the watching from below’, and the role of bystanders in person and online as capable guardians in documenting and exposing police transgression. My background in communications - legal affairs journalism and corporate communications in Sydney, and LGBTIQ+ advocacy and journalism in Asia informs this research.  My most recent research draws on a major case study of a viral YouTube video of police excessive force at the 2013 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, and its impact on police legitimacy within that community and the general public. My broader research focus examines how sousveillance might provide safety from arbitrary police interference and the impact of digital technologies on trust in public institutions, institutional accountability and responsible government. My five years’ in legal affairs journalism in Sydney, and close to 10 years living in Asia and working on sexual orientation and gender rights advocacy for Asia region publications has provided me with a broad perspective on sexual citizenship and how this intersects with notions of crime, deviance and digital technology. Continued police practices of unlawfully directing civilians to stop filming and/or attempting to destroy video evidence of police use of force, and the withholding of police-recorded evidence by police prosecutors, shows that despite the positive impact that bystander video can have on moderating police use of force, this topic requires ongoing scrutiny.

László Christián, National University of Public Service

Email: christian.laszlo@uni-nke.hu

The primary aim of the National University of Public Service (https://en.uni-nke.hu/) is the high-level training of the future and present staff of public administration, law enforcement, national defence and national security services on Bachelor, Master and Doctoral level. My Department for Private Security and Local Governmental Law Enforcement is responsible for training full-time and part time-students within the undergraduate (BA) specialisation in Private Security with further specializations in Information Security and Local Governmental Law Enforcement. Our Security Manager Master program is just under accreditation now. Effective cooperation takes place with the professional chamber (the Chamber of Bodyguards, Property Protection and Private Detectives) and with the leading private security companies, primarily in the form of job offers, summer work placements and scholarship programmes.

In 2018/2019 we establised an international research group: The role of private security and local governmental law enforcement in 21st century law enforcement. The objective of the research group entitled is to comprehensively examine the field of private and municipal policing regarding its domestic situation with an international outlook. (International guest professors: Prof. Mahesh Nalla, Dr. Andrej Sotlar)

We conduct a survey in this academic year (2019/2020), which focusing on private security legislation and practice from the aspect of security managers in Hungary.

Research interest: local security, municipal police, private security, volunteers in law enforcement, plural policing.

Liam O'Shea,The London School of Economics, England

Email: l.oshea@lse.ac.uk

Dr Liam O'Shea is an expert on police and police reform in developing countries and politics and security in the former Soviet Union. In 2020/21 Liam holds the LSE Dinam Fellowship, through which he is developing new frameworks and tools of analysis to help governments, NGOs and donors understand the key factors which affect public police behaviour and police reform. Liam will also explore which policy options work, when, and under what conditions, to reduce police violence and corruption and improve police efficiency. Drawing from his practitioner experience, as an adviser in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and insights from international relations, police studies and criminology, Liam will deliver research on interventions to develop democratic and inclusive security forces. 

Liam is especially interested in designing policy and interventions that start with a thorough examination of the policing reality of developing countries. He has previously researched informal police practices in the former Soviet Union, and is interested in the interaction between public and non-public police, and their relative contribution to policing, more broadly. 

Logan Puck, Salen State University

Email: logan.hj.puck@gmail.com

I am interested in the relationship between private security firms and states in Latin America, particularly Mexico. I am particularly focused on how the Mexican state has attempted to control, direct, and compete with the private security industry and the ways in which companies have responded to these efforts. I am also interested in how the quality and reputation of public security institutions shapes private security firms' marketing strategies. I am currently in the process of co-authoring an article with Adam White comparing the similarities and differences between police – private security relations in Mexico and in the United Kingdom. Other research projects I am working on include an investigation of Mexican hybrid public-private police forces and their impact on democracy and an analysis of the role and impact of military fetishism on private security firms in Mexico.

Marc Schuilenburg, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Email: m.b.schuilenburg@vu.nl

Marc Schuilenburg worked for six years for the Public Prosecution Service, before joining the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at the VU University Amsterdam. His PhD in Social Sciences on the workings of security assemblages in urban environments, was awarded the triennial Willem Nagel Prize by the Dutch Society of Criminology. His expertise and areas of research include politics and crime control, governance of security, social order, theoretical criminology, smart cities, and disruptive technologies. He is the author of ‘Mediapolis: Popular Culture and the City’ (2006) and ‘The Securitization of Society: Crime, Risk, and Social Order’ (2015). In his new book ‘Hysteria: Crime, Media, and Politics’ (2021), he examines the political and cultural narratives of hysteria in areas, such as the governance of security.

Marina Hiller Foshaugen, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo

Email:  m.h.foshaugen@jus.uio.no

My interest in plural policing is due to the broadening spectrum of contributors to crime prevention, and more specifically public, private and volunteer organizations' involvement in proactive approaches to crime control. My PhD research is a comparative study of public, private and voluntary policing actors in Norway, which will explore how and why they are performing proactive policing in public spaces. Through fieldwork and interviews, the project will examine the policing practice of the Norwegian police, private security guards and the Night Ravens, a voluntary organization patrolling public spaces in the evening and at night, and investigate their roles, motivations and rationales in situational crime prevention and community safety. The project will highlight understandings of crime prevention and safety approaches from the policing actors' perspectives, to better comprehend their proactive policing practices.

Mary Fraser, The Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research (SCCJR), Scotland

Email: drmaryfraser@aol.com

My current interest is the social conscience of the police in helping the population, particularly 1900-1920. My recent focus has been on their work during the First World War, when massive changes were dictated by government. However, they maintained their autonomy by politely refusing to undertake some of the demands, for example the surveillance of women receiving the war separation allowance.

My work shows the everyday detail of policemen’s lives on the beat and their incorporated families. Data are from popular police journals, national and local archives and local newspapers, which piece together some previously uncovered areas of police work.

My current work is a national study of Police as Ploughmen in 1917/18. Whereas other groups, such as soldiers, have been recognised as helping agriculture, the police contribution to date has been ignored. However, between 500-600 policemen were released to plough for around 2 months when Britain faced starvation due to enemy action sinking cargo ships importing grain, on which Britain was 81% reliant. Simultaneously the potato crop rotted in the ground threatening the main foods for poorer people. Lloyd George’s Plough Police prevented food riots in Britain, which occurred in many other combatant nations. The police deserve to be recognised for their contribution. This work is funded by The Police History Society and can be followed on Writing Police History Blog.

I was Senior Lecturer, Department of Government, University of Strathclyde teaching research methods and supervising post-graduate dissertations/theses. I have held public appointments in England and Scotland.

Megan O'Neill, University of Dundee, Scotland

Email: m.oneil@dundee.ac.uk

Dr Megan O’Neill is a Reader at the University of Dundee and is an Associate Director of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research. Dr O'Neill has an extensive background of policing research which has included conducting studies of football policing, Black Police Associations, community policing, partnership working, Police Community Support Officers (as plural policing actors) and stop and search. She has interests in policing in the private sector and urban surveillance. Dr O'Neill leads the Eyes Online project (funded by the Nordforsk consortium), exploring state surveillance of the internet in the UK, Norway and Finland. She is also involved in managing a European network, PolStops, which explores practice and governance of stop and search in Europe. Dr O’Neill was a contributor to the Lord Stevens Independent Commission on Policing published in 2013 and was the Chair of the Policing Network for the British Society of Criminology for three years. Dr O’Neill’s most recent book, Police Community Support Officers (2019, Clarendon Series, Oxford University Press), examines plural policing within the public sector and the occupational culture which results. She is working to further develop this examination of policing auxiliaries within an international context.

Melissa Pepper, University of Greenwich, England

Email: m.j.pepper@greenwich.ac.uk

My research interests are largely focused around citizens in policing – in particular, volunteers – and the role they play in a pluralised policing landscape. I have recently submitted my PhD thesis, supervised by Professor Karen Bullock and Dr Daniel McCarthy at the University of Surrey, titled Doing More for Less in Changing Times: Exploring the Motivations, Contributions, and Experiences of Police Support Volunteers. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the study explores the motivations of Police Support Volunteers (PSVs), their contributions, the importance they attach to ‘being useful’, the experiences they have alongside officers and staff, and the extent to which they feel recognised and valued for their time in a large, urban constabulary in England. The study also considers the police organisation itself - the infrastructure in place to support, manage, develop, and involve PSVs – features that are recognised as central to volunteer experiences. I have previously conducted research with some of the youngest volunteers in policing – the Volunteer Police Cadets (VPC) – exploring their motivations and contributions, and opportunities that the cadet programme presents for young people to experience positive personal encounters with police officers. I have worked in government social research – in the Home Office and currently the London Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) – for 17 years. In these roles I have contributed to research and analysis across a range of policy areas including domestic abuse, sexual violence, harmful practices, hate crime, substance misuse, drug premises closures, and community engagement.

Nathalie Hirschmann, University of Münster, Germany

Her research interests are amongst others the sociology of professions and organisational sociology in the context of security and plural policing research.

Currently, she works within the BMBF funded junior research group PluS-i (www.plus-i.de/en) which is about plural policing in urban areas in Germany and deals with aspects of the so-called context adequacy (Kontextadäquanz) of (plural) policing, the sociological perspective of (plural) policing models and professionalisation issues of policing.

Ola Kazeem Falodun, Technological University Dublin, Ireland

Email: D19126934@mytudublin.ie

People across the African continent are facing trauma of insecurity ranging from violent crimes, terrorism and other treats to their lives. Security production and provision in major African countries is state-centric, wherefore plural policing needs to be entrenched especially in the sub-Sahara region. There is common assertion on security and sustainable development that there cannot be sustainable development without peace and security, and sustainable peace and security become impossible in the absence of development and poverty eradication.

Ola’s research has focused on policing, security governance and plural policing in Africa. He is interested in exploring security fields in Sub-Sahara Africa, the role and influence of political class in the production of security, and the network of state, private and civil actors in steering and implementing security governance. He is currently researching on Security governance and sustainable development in Sub-Sahara Africa where threats to life, health, freedom, wealth and human rights unequivocally undermine development.

Ola Kazeem Falodun is a PhD researcher at School of Languages, Law and Social Sciences of the Technological University Dublin. He is a member of Security and Policing Research Group, a member of International Association of Crime Analysts, a member of Chartered Institute of Forensic & Investigative Auditors, a fellow of the Institute of Management Specialist.

Philip Stenning, Griffith University, Australia and University of Leeds, Engalnd

During my career I have held positions at the University of Toronto in Canada (1968-2002), Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand (2003-2005), Keele University in the U.K. (2006-2010), and Griffith University in Australia (2011-present). Policing, and in particular private (non-government) policing provision (especially the role of private security) has been a primary focus of my research, writing, teaching and doctoral supervision. I first started to focus my research on the broader phenomenon of ‘plural’ policing provision, in the early 1990’s, and have been undertaking comparative international research on this topic since then. I am currently involved, with Professor Marleen Easton at Ghent University in Belgium, and my long-time colleague Professor Clifford Shearing at the University of Cape Town in South Arica, in a comparative study of plural policing and security provision in maritime ports, with the Ports of Antwerp and Brisbane as the principal research sites. I am particularly interested in exploring relationships between government (public sector) and non-government (private sector) policing provision in such ‘plural policing’ provision environments.

Pieter Leloup, Ghent University, Belgium

The principal focus of my work has been on historical patterns of (private) security provision and changing relationships between state and non-state security actors since the nineteenth century until today. In 2019 I finished a PhD on the history of the private security industry in Belgium between 1907 and 1990, the years, respectively, in which the first security firms emerged and a specific private security regulation was introduced. This work describes its historical stages of development against the background of broader transformations in the security landscape. Currently I am a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University, where I work on a project titled ‘Private security in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom: A cross-national comparative analysis of late modern policy trends in a Continental European and Anglo-American context’. This research compares cross-national trends in private security policies since 1980, enabling important gaps in knowledge to be identified and bridged, ones which currently hinder criminological understanding of longer-term policy developments in both a Continental European and Anglo-American setting.

Ronald van Steden, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Email: r.van.steden@vu.nl

Ronald is the coordinator of the Knowledge Hub Security and Social Resilience, which assists the Dutch government and its ministries on the national level, as well as municipalities, the police force and security regions on the local level in their approach to security problems. Ronald undertakes research in the areas of policing and security governance. The former area includes studies of plural policing (think, for example, of municipal law enforcement officers and voluntary police) and private security in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The latter area covers studies of collaboration between police, plural policing agencies, active citizens, such as neighborhood watches and  WhatsApp prevention groups, and other partners. Van Steden teaches in the master Governance of Security at VU Amsterdam. He is interested in the religious, moral and philosophical dimensions of policing and security too.

Samuel Moreira, University of Porto, Portugal

Email: smoreira@direito.up.pt 

I am a lecturer in Criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Porto, and my academic work has been mainly in the areas of security and policing. Regarding plural policing, I am principally interested in the role of the private security sector, namely their governance of public and quasi-public spaces and the changing nature of social control brought by this sector. My research has mainly focused on public perceptions and attitudes towards private security guards. I am currently conducting research into the perceived legitimacy of private security guards and its consequences, including compliance, using quantitative and qualitative methods. I recently published an article (January 2020) on compliance with private security guards’ demands, examining particularly the influence of instrumental and normative judgments in shaping compliance. I am also interested in following subjects: (i) The growth of private security, namely the contextual conditions underlying its rise; (ii) The regulation and oversight of the private security sector; (iii) The articulation between public and private actors and; (iv) The role of private security in public security.

Sophie Nakueira, Max Planck Institute for Anthropology, Germany

Research interests

Auspices of global governance, architectures of governance, plural policing, legal pluralism and migration

Research area

South Africa, Uganda, Eastern Africa

Short bio

Dr. Sophie Nakueira is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, department ‘Law and Anthropology’. Prior to joining Max Planck Institute, she guest-lectured at the University of Cape Town’s Centre of Criminology on diverse topics on plural governance, plural policing and legal pluralism and transnational private governance. She is an interdisciplinary scholar with training in law, criminology and ethnography. She has empirically examined structures of governance, private-public partnerships, plural policing and plural ordering in mega event spaces, refugee settlements and the technologies and strategies of policing migration from the global South to the global North. Analytically she is interested in understanding how regulatory networks, public-private partnerships, global legal regimes and non-state normative orders interact to shape events and governance of objectives in local and global spaces. Nakueira has taught at the University of Zurich in the department of Social anthropology and cultural studies and has given a number of lectures and seminars at the Faculty of Law at the University of Antwerp in Belgium as an invited guest. Her full profile can be found here https://www.eth.mpg.de/nakueira. To learn about her current project please visit https://www.vulner.eu.

Stuart Lister, University of Leeds, England

My research into plural policing has focused on three particular aspects. First, the diversification of visible patrol, a development which seen an increasing mix of public, private and municipal providers of policing operating in public spaces. Secondly, the pluralisation of the public police, particularly evident in the increasing role of police auxiliaries (such as Police Community Support Officers) in the delivery of policing, and the growth of arrangements to out-source police functions to the private sector. Third, the governance of plural networks of policing, with a particular focus on the individual and collective accountability of diverse forms policing.

Synnøve Ø. Jahnsen, Norwegian Research Centre

Email: syja@norceresearch.no

My interest in plural policing has grown out of my interest in gender and migration, and more specifically out of research projects on policing of prostitution and human trafficking, outlaw motorcycle gangs and exploitation of migrant workers, areas in which crime prevention through public/private partnership arrangements has been central in national as well as international policy developments. My empirical research includes ethnographic fieldwork among Norwegian and Australian police forces, hereunder multi-agency task forces and intelligence units. My current research projects focuses on the Norwegian police reform, the implementation of intelligence-led policing and coordination within the area of work-related crime. 

Tessa Diphoorn, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Email: T.G.Diphoorn@uu.nl

Tessa Diphoorn is an anthropologist who conducts ethnographic fieldwork on everyday policing practices and analyses how various security providers interact and overlap. Her previous research focused on the everyday practices of armed response officers in Durban, South Africa and what their performances of security meant for urban violence and power. Thereafter she worked as a post-doctoral researcher within the SECURCIT project, where she conducted comparative research on public-private security assemblages in Kenya, Israel, and Jamaica. She is currently conducting research on police reform in Nairobi, Kenya and analyses the various mechanisms and practices that have been implemented to transform the Kenyan police. Combined, she is interested in dynamics of power, violence, and authority and the role of plural policing therein.

Thomas Friis Søgaard, Aarhus University 

Email: tfs.crf@psy.au.dk

In the post-industrial city, nightlife districts have gained economic, social and governmental prominence. While a sprawling night-time economy offers new opportunities for cities to reinvent themselves as places of consumption, nightlife district are also associated with public drunkenness, disorder, violence and young adults’ experimentation with illegal club drugs. Furthermore, nightlife districts are regularly frequented by individuals associated with organized crime. To address these problems and issues, the policing of nightlife districts is undergoing significant changes, including the emergence of local coalitions between public authorities, venue owners and bouncers. Within these networks, public and private actors are expected to collaborate and take responsibility for nightlife safety. In my research, I make use of ethnographic approaches, including participant observation and interviews, to explore plural policing developments in the Danish night-time economy. I use this research as a springboard for exploring broader tendencies in the formation, dynamics and changes of plural policing in the context of the western night-time economy. More specifically, my research has focused on how the formation of plural policing complexes are sometimes instrumental in the policing and exclusion of individuals identified by police as ‘gang’; how plural policing bodies are involved in the enforcement of patron banning orders, and in the policing of recreational users of illegal drugs; and how cross-institutional knowledge sharing, trust building and power-struggles shape the street-level policing of nightlife scenes. 

Trevor Bradley, Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Email: trevor.bradley@vuw.ac.nz

I am involved in an ongoing programme of research focused on plural policing in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Thus far, this has included extensive research on New Zealand's private security industry, including governance/regulations, industry standards/professionalism and training. This work has resulted in a various journal articles, features for specialist industry publications and book chapters. Currently, I am focused on another, different manifestation of plural policing in New Zealand, namely citizen-led, volunteer community patrols, and a research project looking at the relationship between the patrols and New Zealand police.