Policing Gender and Ethics: An Ethnographic View of Culture and Practice Seminar

Speaker information

Dr Louise Westmarland, The Open University. My research interests largely focus on the police and their occupational culture. This has included studies of gender and policing, homicide investigations and most recently corruption, integrity and ethics. In 2013 I completed some training to make me an accredited Home Office Domestic Homicide Investigator, which means that I can be called upon to conduct a review of the circumstances around any death involving the death of a person by a family member, partner or former partner. I'm also interested in ethnographic research methods, particularly where privileged access leads to dilemmas for researchers. In the past I have published articles on police informers and the way they are regulated and the effect of this upon rights and justice. More recently I've completed a book about research methods in criminology and a journal article about homicide detectives in the US. Other previous research projects have included studying women bouncers and violence in the context of social control of the night time economy (ESRC Grant reference: RES-000-23-0384-A). One project was called 'Women on the Door: Female Bouncers in the New Night-time Economy' carried out with Prof Dick Hobbs. Another project that was awarded ESRC funding was about police, public services and consumer culture (ESRC Grant reference RES-143-25-0008). This was called 'Creating Citizen-Consumers: Changing Relationships and Identifications' and was carried out with colleagues at The Open University. I am currently conducting an extensive survey of police officers' corrupt behaviour and beliefs about their actions and those of their colleagues and hope to obtain ESRC funding to take this forward.