On two wet and chilly days at the beginning of June, forty professionals (academics, police officers, police staff, College of Policing staff, and others) met in Lancaster for the N8 PRP Celebrating Research and its Impact on Policing summer school. This event showcased research and its impact, funded by the N8 PRP small grants competitions and N8 PRP sponsored and associated PhDs.

Dr Jill Clark, N8 PRP Small Grants lead reflected on “how extraordinary it was to witness the value and impact of the research, usually undertaken in co-production between policing and academia.” Research ranged across multiple different policing areas, including: domestic abuse and coercive control; cybercrime; drug use; interviewing techniques; big data and machine learning; partnership working; mental health; and specialist policing roles. Even more extraordinary than the research projects – impressive though each of these are in their own right – is the scale and diversity of the on-going impact of the research, in the case of the small grants – often several years after the initial, modest grants of up to £25k. Dr Jude Towers, N8 PRP Training and Learning strand lead also identified “the links and synergy between the projects mean that overall the knowledge and impact being generated is far in excess of the ‘sum of the parts’”.

Further initiatives have come out of the day too: The Training and Learning strand will be organising a one-day event in late summer to bring together quantitative criminologists/policing researchers and police analysts to explore the possibility of developing a new UK-based research group. If you are interested in hearing more or would like to be on the invite list for the event contact Dr Jude Towers: j.s.towers@ljmu.ac.uk

You can find links to the presentations from the summer school below:

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