Collaborative projects

Members of the Centre have been involved in a number of collaborative projects often with members of other institutions. The most recent of these include:

History and Policy

Criminal justice historians at The Open University have always considered the public engagement elements of their work. Currently the Centre is engaging closely with History and Policy. Chris Williams is a Senior Associate at H&P, and since 2015, has convened the H&P seminar series at the Home Office, through which Home Office civil servants learn about relevant developments from historians. This consistently records a high impact on the ways that the audience do their jobs. The 2017 series of seminars can be found here.

Chris Williams and Rosalind Crone have also written articles for History and Policy’s website, on prison education and reform, the Hillsborough inquests, police back office systems, and the past and present of police accountability.

Act global think local: the exchange of capacity between international and domestic policing

A collaborative international project between the Centre for the History of Crime, Policing and Justice (Georgina Sinclair) and Australian Centre for Excellence in Policing and Security (Melissa Bull)

This project investigated the relationship between overseas deployment and the national and local priorities of the police services who train and supply personnel for international missions across the spectrum of peacekeeping, capacity and capability building. It did this through an international comparative study of deployment from Australia and the UK; both key players in the field of international policing though with very different resource bases.  The key objectives were to:

1. Analyse the relationship between local policing priorities and practices and the rationalities for and process of engagement in international domains
2. Examine whether and how international deployment currently impacts on or contributes to local policing policy and practice – highlighting barriers and opportunities for the integration of international and domestic policing practices
3. Understand how particular policing practices are distributed, travel, are traded or exchanged between actors, agencies and jurisdictions/states
4. Develop a theoretical understanding of the relationship between local, national and international policing policy and practice that can be used as knowledge transfer platform to inform future policing practice.

Colonial and Postcolonial Policing (COPP)

This international network of academics and practitioners was set up in September 2009 to further the study of colonial, postcolonial and international policing and to provide a forum for discussion and organise events. Hosted by the Open University, this network was convened by Georgina Sinclair and Chris Williams. Click here for more information.

The Making of the Modern Police, 1780-1914 - 6 volume series from Pickering & Chatto

General Editor: Paul Lawrence

All 6 volumes of this collection have been edited by members or associate members of ICHCPJ. Over six themed volumes this edited collection of pamphlets, government publications, printed ephemera and manuscript sources looks at the development of the first modern police force. It will be of interest to social and political historians, criminologists and those interested in the development of the detective novel in nineteenth-century literature. All six volumes were published by Pickering & Chatto in 2014. Follow this link for more information on the contents of each volume and purchasing information.

List of volumes published:

• Volume One: The 'Idea' of Policing, edited by Francis Dodsworth
• Volume Two: Reforming the Police in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Robert M. Morris
• Volume Three: Policing the Poor, edited by Paul Lawrence
• Volume Four: Policing Entertainment, edited by Rosalind Crone
• Volume Five: Policing Public Order and Politics, edited by Janet Clark
• Volume Six: The Development of Detective Policing, edited by Haia Shpayer-Makov

History of Policing - 4 volume reference series from Ashgate

Series Editor: Clive Emsley

Several members of the ICHCPJ have been involved in putting together this four volume reference series for Ashgate. This authoritative series brings together the most important and influential English-language scholarship in the field, arranged chronologically across four volumes. The series includes articles on the shifting meaning of ‘police’, the growth of bureaucratic policing during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, consolidation in the twentieth century, and the international diffusion of export models and practices. The texts included come from a range of disciplines and chart the recent debates from traditional Whig history, revisionist work published during the last quarter of the twentieth century and subsequent reassessments. Follow this link for more information on the contents of each volume and purchasing information.

List of volumes published:

• Volume One: Theories and Origins of the Modern Police, edited by Clive Emsley
• Volume Two: The New Police in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Paul Lawrence
• Volume Three: Police and Policing in the Twentieth Century, edited by Chris A. Williams
• Volume Four: Globalising British Policing, edited by Georgina Sinclair

Local Policing in Eighteenth-Century China and England

In 2010 funding of £7,500 was awarded by the British Academy Visiting Scholars Scheme, so that Professor Peter King could host, with the centre as a whole, the five month visit (July to November) of Dr Songtao Yang, School of law, Henan University, China who worked on a project entitled 'Local Policing in Eighteenth-century China and England: A Comparative study".

GERN Working Group Project Colonial and Postcolonial Policing

This project provided initial funding towards the setting up of a European network of institutions with an interest in advancing the study of colonial and postcolonial policing. The group hosted workshops on colonial policing at the Open University (September 2009), the Sorbonne, Paris (December 2009), Leiden University (September 2010), and School of Law, Porto (April 2011).