The Policing Thematic Group is gaining traction and building critical mass to bring together policing scholars, practitioners and students from Australia and New Zealand to advance the science of policing and enhance public safety for all people. With me, the Policing Thematic Group Executive (Toby Miles-Johnson, Lisa Tompson, Ross Hendy and Angela Dwyer) have been working really hard to bring together ANZSOC members interested in policing research, policy and practice; facilitate dissemination of policing research and create some fun opportunities. Here are some of our initiatives for 2022:
- We are establishing a Police Thematic Group Prize that we will call “The Outstanding Policing Research Award.” Stay tuned for a “call for nominations.” The award will target mid and early career researchers and will be awarded at the ANZSOC conference in Darwin in November.
- Talking about the conference…please put it in your calendars. Its in late November (28th-30th) and its in Darwin. Toby is going to use some of our allocated funds to host a thematic group social at the conference. We would love for as many of you to come along, meet your colleagues in person and build some long term friendships and foster new collaborations.
- Ross and Angela are busy building a virtual network of police officers doing higher degree studies – check out their call for folks to join their network in another PacifiCrim post.
- Lisa has introduced us all to Slack. Nope – not “being slack” but rather being part of an online forum using the software “Slack” – if you have not already signed up to be part of Slack, please do! https://join.slack.com/t/slack-bty9111/shared_invite/zt-14nz6dquc-Maqj8R61AdDdTuLkldffVw I have to say it is a really fantastic forum. Toby and Ross have advertised jobs on this site; we have learned that Russell Brewer played Ice Hockey at a high level in Canada and that many of our mid and early career colleagues are knee deep in juggling heavy workloads and young children.
- Finally, we are trying to launch a “watch when you want” panel forum series. The idea is to upload it onto Slack and create an opportunity for folks to watch it by themselves (when they want) or partake in a conversation about the panel chat over a glass of wine after the kids are in bed on a Wednesday evening. We are not very far along with this idea, so if anyone is out there and wants to help us with this initiative, please let me know!
That’s all from me for now. We hope to bring all of this to fruition over the course of 2022. Please join in the Slack conversation as a starting point.
Lorraine Mazerolle, University of Queensland