Review of emerging technologies in policing: findings and recommendations

Appendix 6: Research Team

This review of emerging technologies in policing was undertaken between January and July 2022 by a team of researchers from the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, the Department of Law, and the Department of Management, Work and Organisation, at the University of Stirling in Scotland. The Principal Investigator was Dr Niall Hamilton-Smith.

Team Members

Dr Irena L. C. Connon, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Stirling

Dr Irena Connon is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Stirling. She is a Social Anthropologist and transdisciplinary researcher whose research focuses on: 1) understanding cross-cultural experiences of environmental hazards and disasters, including oil spills, extreme weather, and industrial legacy contamination; 2) enhancing the inclusion of marginalised people in Disaster Risk Reduction developments; 3) risk communication, 4) climate-related displacement, and 5) developing transdisciplinary methodologies for applied-action research. She holds a PhD from the University of Aberdeen and has won national-level awards for excellence in knowledge exchange. Her research has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and has been used to inform national-level policy, including the current UK Government’s response to weather-related emergencies. Since joining the University of Stirling in 2021, she has been working on several research projects that focus on children’s climate change risk, the lived experience of flooding in Scotland, emerging technologies in policing, and supporting decision making for embedding the complexity and uncertainty associated with climate risk in policy. Prior to this, she held positions at the University of Dundee and at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Email: irena.connon1@stir.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0)1786 467740

Dr Mo Egan, Department of Law, University of Stirling

Dr Mo Egan was admitted as a solicitor in 2007. Her doctoral research, funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research examined the policing of money laundering in a cross-jurisdictional context. In 2010 she was a founding member of the UACES Policing and European Studies Network which provided a forum of knowledge exchange for academic researchers, police practitioners and policy makers engaged in policing cross-border crime or crimes of cross-national concern. In 2019 she was appointed to the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) Discipline + Catalyst for Law. She is a founding member of the Scottish Law and Innovation Network (SCOTLIN) and member of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy (CRISP). In 2021 she joined the Review Board of the Journal of Legal Research Methodology and became a member of REPHRAIN (National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online) Peer Review College. Dr Egan continues to research in the field of justice and home affairs with a particular interest in financial crime, inter-agency cooperation in policing, privacy, and the interplay between state and non-state agencies in the delivery of justice.

Email: mo.egan@stir.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0)1786 467591

Dr Niall Hamilton-Smith, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Stirling

Dr Niall Hamilton-Smith is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Stirling, an Associate Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and a member of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research. Niall moved to Stirling in 2007, having previously been a researcher in government, primarily working on policing and crime reduction projects. In Stirling Niall has continued to work on a range of police-related research projects both directly for policing and for the Scottish Government. This has included innovative work on developing new techniques for mapping and assessing organised crime threats, a pilot for mapping community intelligence using a signal crimes framework, research around public disorder and hate crime, as well as work exploring the impact of camera technology in the policing of football crowds.

Email: niall.hamilton-smith@stir.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0)1786 466435

Niamh MacKay, formerly of the Department of Law, University of Stirling

Niamh Mackay was a Research Assistant at the University of Stirling. Her research interests focus on international human rights law. She holds a Masters in International Human Rights Law and Diplomacy from the University of Stirling and an MA in French from the University of Glasgow.

Dr Diana Miranda, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Stirling

Dr Diana Miranda is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Stirling. Her research aligns criminological and sociological approaches to understanding emerging biometric and data driven technologies in the Criminal Justice System. In particular, she explores how surveillance impacts our bodies and identities through processes of technologically mediated suspicion: in policing, criminal investigation, smart cities, security of borders and prisons. Before Stirling and SCCJR, Diana worked in various UK HE institutions (Northumbria University, Keele University, Open University and Birkbeck - University of London) and other European universities (Girona in Spain and University of Minho, University of Porto and University of Coimbra in Portugal). She has published widely on international journals such as Criminology & Criminal Justice, Policing & Society, Surveillance & Society, Information & Communications Technology Law and Information Polity.

Email: diana.miranda@stir.ac.uk

Telephone: + 44 (0)1786 467710

Professor C. William R. Webster, Department of Management, Work and Organisation, University of Stirling

William Webster is Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Stirling Management School, University of Stirling. He is a Director of CRISP (the Centre for Research into Information Surveillance and Privacy), a research centre dedicated to understanding the social impacts and consequences of technologically mediated surveillance practices. Professor Webster has research expertise in the policy processes, regulation and governance of CCTV, surveillance in everyday life, privacy and surveillance ethics, as well as public policy relating to data protection, eGovernment, and electronic public services. He is currently co- Editor-in-Chief of the journal Information Polity, co-chair of the Scottish Privacy Forum and co-chair of the EGPA (European Group of Public Administration) Permanent Study Group on eGovernment, and between 2009 and 2014 he led the Living in Surveillance Societies (LiSS) COST Action. He has also led a number of international research projects, including the ESRC SmartGov (Smart Governance of Sustainable Cities) project and the European Commission funded Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies (IRISS) and ‘ASSERT’ projects.

Email: william.webster@stir.ac.uk

Telephone: + 44 (0)1786 467358