Protest and Policing in the Time of the Pandemic Event

Freedom of expression and assembly are core features of democracy. However, restrictions to rights to liberty have been justified to prevent the spread of serios infectious disease. Regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic have therefore sought to restrict public assemblies. At the same time in 2020 the #BlackLivesMatter movement responded dynamically to police violence. Further significant protests in the UK in 2020 included protest events of Extinction Rebellion and protests over government response to the pandemic. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021 responds to these protest events and has immediately resulted in further protests. At the same time, Northern Ireland is experiencing a return to violent protest.   

This panel brings together a group of experts who are reflecting on protest and policing in the times of the pandemic. Speakers will discuss continuities and discontinuities, as well as the future of protest, how it is policed and how protest responds to policing.

The speakers are:

Graeme Hayes is Reader in Political Sociology at Aston University, UK. His research focuses on environmental social movements, civil disobedience, and the criminal trials of activists. His most recent book is Breaking Laws: Violence and Civil Disobedience in Protest (Amsterdam UP, 2019). He is an Editor of Environmental Politics, and Consulting Editor for Social Movement Studies.

Nisha Kapoor is Associate Professor in Sociology at Warwick University. Her research interests are broadly concerned with racism and the security state covering topics relating to immigration, citizenship, criminalization, Islamophobia, segregation and authoritarianism. Theoretically, she draws on critical race, postcolonial, and political theory to assist in the undertaking of this work. Her current research explores the role surveillance processes and technologies play in bordering practices in different national contexts (UK, India). Her earlier research, some of which is published in her book Deport Deprive Extradite. 21st Century State Extremism (Verso, 2018), was funded by an ESRC Future Research Leaders Award (2015-2018). The three-year project examined race, citizenship and the state in the context of the War on Terror. Documenting stories and cases of individuals subject to extradition, citizenship deprivation and passport removals, incarceration and deportation, the research asked what such techniques and technologies illuminate about the broader features and operations of the security state.

Finn Mackay has a background in youth and advice work, setting up and managing domestic violence prevention education and anti-bullying programmes for a London LEA before taking up a PhD in the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol. Finn has been involved in feminist activism for over twenty years, since living at a Women's Peace Camp in the 1990s. In 2004 Finn founded the London Feminist Network and revived the London Reclaim the Night march. Finn is currently a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

Margit Mayer is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at Technical University Berlin. Her research focuses on contemporary urban politics, urban theory, (welfare) state restructuring, social movements, and migrant organizing. She co-edited Cities for People not for Profit (2012), Neoliberal Urbanism and Its Contestations (2012) and Urban Uprisings: Challenging the Neoliberal City in Europe (2016) and recently published on progressive movements in the U.S.

Brian Moss is a Lecturer in Criminology, focusing on policing and regulation, who has taught at universities in the UK and Ireland and, prior to academic appointments, worked in research roles within oversight and non-profit bodies in Ireland and Belgium, and as a probation officer.

Please register for the event here

Meeting ID: 893 6583 8098, password: 685025