As Dr Ellen Reeves moves on from her role as NRiPN Director, she reflects on her experience

In my final weeks as Director of the N8 PRP New Researchers in Policing Network (NRiPN), I have been reflecting on my time in this role – what I have learned and what I hope I have offered early career researchers working with the police. Since stepping into this role in December 2024, I have facilitated, with the help of Helen, Geoff, and Layla, a programme of events designed to support NRiPN members at various stages of their policing research journeys.

Our Excellence in Policing Research webinars covered impact, collaboration with the police, and ethics. These core topics lie at the heart of the challenges and opportunities in policing research. In later events, these themes re-emerged as members grappled with leading co-produced research projects that deliver tangible impacts for police forces. The webinar series gave members the opportunity to learn from senior academics, who shared how they navigated challenges and took concrete steps to ensure the impact of their work.

We followed this with our methodology series, which examined ethnographies, quantitative research, focus groups, interviews, and creative methods. The sessions on interviews and creative methods were particularly well-attended. This highlights that traditional methods like interviews remain essential, while also showing that police forces are increasingly eager to embrace creative approaches to complex, nuanced issues in criminal justice. It is fantastic to see the next generation of policing researchers thinking outside the box and placing innovation and creativity at the centre of efforts to understand and improve policing responses.

This year, we also launched our Work in Progress sessions, offering NRiPN members a platform to present their research. We ran three of these sessions this year, and it was wonderful to see members show up for one another with valuable insight and support. The goal was to ensure NRiPN provided space for bi-directional engagement, allowing members to be active participants in the network.

During my time as Director, we also hosted two in-person workshops. The first, a Research Away Day held last summer at the University of Sheffield, was co-hosted by North and South Yorkshire Police Constabularies. It offered attendees the opportunity to discuss research ideas directly with police representatives and learn more about force priorities. More recently, we hosted a grant writing workshop at the University of Manchester, led by Professor Catherine Robinson. Ahead of the event, attendees were paired with academic mentors to work closely on developing funding bids. It was a fantastic day for many reasons, but a standout highlight for me was creating space to discuss not just success, but also failure in the face of an increasingly challenging funding landscape. Both events underscored the immense value of bringing people together in a room, and it was rewarding to see connections forged across different research areas.

It has been a jam-packed (almost) two years. Alongside these events, I have had the privilege of getting to know NRiPN members, as well as N8 PRP academic and police leads. I have gained deep insight into the inner workings of police research and the partnerships, collaborative efforts, and underlying tensions and challenges that shape them. My time as Director has been invaluable, and I feel extremely fortunate to have had this experience. I am thrilled to hand over the reins to Dr Emma Tuschick who I know will do a fantastic job in the role.

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