Research Centre for Learning and Teaching

Projects

N8 Policing Research Partnership Catalyst project: ‘Innovation and the Application of Knowledge for More Effective Policing

This exciting five-year programme of research and knowledge exchange is pioneering an innovative collaboration between police forces and universities in the North of England.

This exciting five-year programme of research and knowledge exchange is pioneering an innovative collaboration between police forces and universities in the North of England. It intends to build a regional policing research platform with national impact and international significance.

The overall project aim is to build research co-production capacity and test mechanisms for exploiting the knowledge and expertise of the HE sector in order to strengthen the evidence base on which police policy, practice and training are developed and so support innovation and the professionalisation of policing.  

The programme has been designed to make an important contribution to innovation and the aspiration for the professionalisation of policing. Nine interconnected and mutually supportive activity strands. Each N8 institution leads on a strand - Newcastle leads on the Co-production strand - which are planned to deliver project goals by providing a robust and sustainable platform for HE-police collaboration. The programme is providing mechanisms to bring researchers and practitioners together to design and undertake research that focuses specifically on new and emerging challenges for policing. This initiative is developing and testing mechanisms of knowledge exchange and research co-production to strengthen the evidence base on which policing policy, practice and learning are developed. These activities will also secure a culture change in the use of research in policing and relations between researchers and policing professionals. The co-production strand facilitates and supports research co-production via a ring fenced budget which will pump-prime co-produced research around the following areas:

  1. New and emerging technologies and innovative policing strategies: supporting research evaluations of the use, implications and public acceptability / legitimacy of the use of new technologies and strategies.
  2. Small grants: pump-priming funds are available to support research into targeted and urgent areas of policing work as well as areas where the gaps in the knowledge are of most prominence and where research benefits are of greatest value to policing.
  3. The partnership also supports nine collaborative PhD studentships. Each of the N8 PRP institutions has registered one PGR funded for three years, benefiting from advanced training, methods and skills development provided by the three Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) that make up the N8. In line with the ESRC collaborative model of studentship, the projects will be designed in conjunction with the policing partners and will entail substantive knowledge exchange components.

Links: https://n8prp.org.uk/

https://n8prp.org.uk/small_grants/

https://n8prp.org.uk/research_coproduction/

Contact

For further information contact:
Jill Clark, Principal Investigator.
Email: Jill.Clark@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: 0191 208 5637