#HCNet

Wednesday, 24 February 2021

British Crime Historians Symposium 2021

Call for papers

The British Crime Historians Symposium (BCHS) meets regularly to discuss and debate original historical research on all aspects of crime, policing, punishment, law, criminal justice and social regulation. For the first time in its history, it will be hosted fully online on Zoom. The conference will take place on 2-3 September 2021 and feature a keynote presentation from Professor Randolph Roth (Ohio State University).

Interested in participating? Choose from a range of presentation formats, detailed in the full call for papers (below for view or download). Please send proposals by email attachment to bchs@leeds.ac.uk by 28 May 2021.

Tuesday, 23 February 2021

Online Seminar Series Starts Soon

Crime and Justice Research Group @LSBU

The Crime and Justice Research Group at London South Bank University (LSBU) have announced a series of online seminars starting in March 2021 that are likely to be of interest to Historical Criminologists.

Presenters include #HCNet member and Lecturer in Criminology at LSBU, Dr. Esmorie Miller. The full programme can be viewed or downloaded below.

All seminars take place from 3.30pm on a Wednesday, are free and open to all. For joining instructions contact crimeresearch@lsbu.ac.uk or DM the group on Twitter @LSBU_Crime.

Wednesday, 20 January 2021

Feminist Perspectives on Women's Violence

Call for Abstracts.

A call for abstracts has been issued for a handbook on feminist perspectives on women’s violence, edited by Stacy Banwell, Lynsey Black, Dawn Cecil, Yanyi Djamba, Sitawa Kimuna, Emma Milne, Lizzie Seal and Eric Tenkorang.

The interdisciplinary handbook will offer a wide conceptualization of violence, taking account of a wide range of theoretical perspectives. Historical perspectives are welcome.

Submissions and queries should be emailed to Lynsey Black (lynsey.black@mu.ie). It is anticipated that full chapters (6,000 words) will be due on 31 October 2021.

Further details are provided below (from the editors).

Black and white printed newspaper illustration (drawing) portrait of a woman in Victorian dress, hatless, with severe hairstyle and serious expression looking directly at the viewer. Captions read 'The Richmond Murder: Portraits and Scenes' and 'The prisoner, Kate Webster'.

'The prisoner, Kate Webster' Illustrated Police News, 3 May 1879, cover.

Handbook on Feminist Perspectives on Women's Violence

Editors

Stacy Banwell, Lynsey Black, Dawn Cecil, Yanyi Djamba, Sitawa Kimuna, Emma Milne, Lizzie Seal, Eric Tenkorang

Overview

We are encouraging potential contributors to submit abstracts for consideration which relate to this area of research. It is our intention that the Handbook will encompass a wide conceptualisation of violence, including perspectives that look at the question structurally, symbolically, and relationally. In taking this comprehensive approach, we intend the Handbook to make a significant theoretical contribution to how women’s violence is understood.

We are seeking chapters that consider women’s violence across the world and the text will incorporate, but also look beyond, Europe and North America. We are also interested in work from across disciplines: arts, humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary work.

Indicative Themes

We invite contributions related to the below themes. These are broad indicative themes only, and we are interested in all dimensions related to approaches to women’s violence, including theoretical and empirical work which explores this area. We are also interested in research that focuses on criminal justice and social responses, as well as women’s experiences, victim’s experiences, and ‘explanations’ of women’s violence.

• Historical perspectives

• Motherhood

• Intimate violence

• Political violence

• Structural violence

• Women as victim-perpetrators

• Environmental harms and violence against non-human animals

• Media and literary representations and Cultural Criminology

Details

It is anticipated that approximately 6,000-word chapters (inc. refs) would be due 31 Oct 2021.

Please email submissions and questions to: lynsey.black@mu.ie

Tuesday, 19 January 2021

#HCNet Chair Vacancy

Advance notice.

When #HCNet - the British Society of Criminology's Historical Criminology Network - was established in September 2018, it was agreed that the Chair’s term should normally run for three years. As such, we will be looking to appoint a new Chair of the Network later this year (2021).

The Chair is responsible for the overall direction and running of the Network, and is invited to join the British Society of Criminology Executive Committee. Chairs of BSC networks should usually have been members of the BSC for at least one year – though a handover period may be possible for newer members interested in taking on the role.

A call for volunteers will be issued in the Spring. In the meantime, please give some thought to taking on this role. If anybody would like to discuss what is involved, please get in touch with the current Chair, David Churchill: d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk

Black and white photograph of four wooden deck chairs on a lawn. There are bicycles, a path and shrubbery in the background giving the impression of a public park.

Chairs. CC0 (unlimited use) via pxhere.com.

Monday, 18 January 2021

Punishment in global peripheries

Call for papers.

Luiz Dal Santo and Maximo Sozzo have issued a call for papers for a conference on ‘Punishment in Global Peripheries: Contemporary Changes and Historical Continuities’ at the University of Oxford, 24-25 June 2021.

This event seeks to counter the Northern and Western focus of much scholarship in criminology and the sociology of punishment, and to bring an historical perspective to bear on the legacies of colonialism and imperialism for penality in other parts of the world.

Interested in presenting a paper? If so, an abstract of up to 500 words by 22 March 2021 to luiz.dalsanto@crim.ox.ac.uk and delitoysociedad@unl.edu.ar, with your name and affiliation. Decisions shall be communicated by 29 March 2021

Further details are provided in the full call which can be viewed and/or downloaded below.

Sunday, 17 January 2021

Social Science History Association Conference

Call for Papers.

The Crime, Justice and the Law Network of the Social Science History Association have issued a call for papers for the SSHA Conference in Philadelphia, 11-14 November 2021.

The theme of this year’s conference – ‘Crisis, Conjunctures, Turning Points: Theory and Method in Turbulent Times’ – addresses the uses of history in explaining the present. The Crime, Justice and the Law Network also particularly welcome interdisciplinary panels straddling history and the social sciences.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 16 February 2021. For more information, or to make a submission, visit the SSHA website. This link includes the overall conference Call for Papers.

The specific Call for Papers from the Crime, Justice and the Law Network can be downloaded/viewed below.

Saturday, 16 January 2021

Path dependencies and criminal justice reform

Call for abstracts.

Thomas Guiney, Ashley Rubin and Henry Yeomans have issued a call for abstracts for a special issue of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice on ‘Path Dependencies and Criminal Justice Reform: Investigating Continuity and Change across Historical Time’.

This issue – which arises out of a workshop held at the #HCNet virtual event last year – aims to explore the theoretical potential of ‘path dependency’ to explain institutional stability, incremental reform, and periods of rapid policy change in criminal justice.

Submit an abstract (300 words) and short biography (100 words) by 5 March 2021 to: tguiney@brookes.ac.uk; atrubin@hawaii.edu; and h.p.yeomans@leeds.ac.uk. The organisers plan to hold a virtual symposium in November 2021 to discuss draft papers, ahead of submission for peer review in February 2022.

Further details are provided in the full call which can be viewed and/or downloaded below.

Friday, 15 January 2021

Security and the Security Industry in Modern Britain

New project launches.

#HCNet Network Chair David Churchill has begun a new research project: ‘Security for sale in modern Britain: security provision, ensembles and cultures, 1785-1995’.

Funded by an AHRC Leadership Fellowship, this project will document the rise of the security industry and analyse the economic, social and cultural consequences of security commodification in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Further information on the project is available on the University of Leeds website at this link.

A black and white (lithograph?) image of a metal lock shown in cross-section with its internal workings on display, the metal key in the lock reads 'Chubb'.

The Chubb Detector Lock and Mechanism [19thC] (c) Chubb Archives

Monday, 7 September 2020

New book by Dr Alexa Neale

Photographing Crime Scenes in Twentieth-Century London

#HCNet member Alexa Neale is pleased to announce publication of her first monograph titled Photographing Crime Scenes in Twentieth-Century London: Microhistories of Domestic Murder (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

An extract from the publisher's description reads;

"How can we read a crime scene photograph? Photographing Crime Scenes in 20th-Century London will take you inside homes that were murder crime scenes to read their geographical and symbolic meanings in the light of the development of crime scene photography, forensic analysis and psychological testing. In doing so, it reveals how photographs of domestic objects and spaces were more often used to recreate a narrative for the murder based on the defendant's perceived identity than to prove they committed the crime at all."

Each chapter explores narratives of crime and their relationship to visual representations of murder, space and place, visiting homes in Camden Town, Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Limehouse, St. Pancras and North Kensington. Published as part of the Bloomsbury series Histories of Crime, Deviance and Punishment, the book draws on the work of many other distinguished Historical Criminologists and #HCNet members.

As of September 2020 the book is available in Hardback or eBook, or via Bloomsbury Collections to subscribing institutions. A preview of the book can be read below or by clicking here.

Friday, 4 September 2020

States, People, and the History of Social Change

New Book Series

McGill-Queen’s University Press has announced the launch of a new book series which aims to bring together cutting-edge work on the history of criminal justice, welfare and other areas of social change and social policy.

Edited by Rosalind Crone and Heather Shore, works in the series will explore how people have negotiated the use of state power, and what social consequences have followed from state efforts to regulate, improve and otherwise shape people’s lives.

The series welcomes international scholars whose research explores social policy (and its earlier equivalents) as well as other responses to social need, in historical perspective.

Titles under advance contract in the series include #HCNet members. See the flyer for more details:

Thursday, 3 September 2020

What next for #HCNet?

Over the coming weeks and months, the #HCNet steering group will turn to plans for activities over the coming year (2020-2021).
Historical Criminology Network Chair Dave Churchill invites suggestions for events and initiatives, thoughts or comments by email. Drop him a line at d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk
Dave says "With historical criminology groups springing up in other parts of the world, perhaps we should take the opportunity to start a conversation across borders. Or perhaps this is the year to come together to discuss how to embed historical perspectives in teaching in criminology and related disciplines. Or perhaps a series of shorter events, spread over the year, would be the best way to keep in touch in a virtual environment."
What do you think? Comments also welcome below.

A blackboard with the words "what's next" written on it in chalk

Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

Wednesday, 2 September 2020

#HCNet Workshop Report

Seven New Conversations in Historical Criminology

#HCNet - the British Society of Criminology's Historical Criminology Network - held an online workshop on 15 June 2020, bringing together seven working groups to explore areas of common interest in historical criminology.

Discussions included a wide range of themes, from walking methods to police corruption, path dependence to dark tourism.

HCNet Chair David Churchill had originally planned to hold the workshop as an in-person event but the UK lockdown meant a change of plan. David, BSC staff and working group coordinators all worked hard to make the event a success and overcome the challenges presented by the online format. Gratefully, holding the workshop virtually meant that #HCNet members all over the world, who might not otherwise have been able to attend, could participate.

You can now read the full write-up of the event on the BSC blog, featuring wonderful illustrations by Laura Evans of Nifty Fox Creative.

Creative graphic showing text "Historical Criminology Workshop" in grey against a purple background illustrated with a magnifying glass and thumbprint.

Tuesday, 1 September 2020

Convict Lives on Cockatoo Island (Australia) - free online event

10 September 2020 08:30 (UK) / 17:30 (NSW)

As part of the New South Wales History Council's "History Week", #HCNet member Dr Katherine Roscoe will deliver a free online lecture to a global audience, telling the stories of convicts incarcerated on Cockatoo Island (1839-69).

Dr Roscoe will unpack the mythology around Sydney’s “Alcatraz” and challenge convicts' label as “criminals incapable of reform”. Stories include: John Fahey, the Irish soldier-turned-“bushman”, “Black” John Perry, the prize-winning boxer; bushranger and poet, Owen Suffolk; Tan, a Chinese gold-digger who refused to work; and the relationship between “two Fredericks”.

Together, their stories tell us about life in the Australian colony, from the bush to the bustling port city, and how prisoners survived or even thrived on the island.

Dr Roscoe will also introduce digital resources available at https://cockatooconvicts.wordpress.com/. This research is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK)

Registering is essential as attendees will be able to view the lecture live via a Zoom link (to be emailed to attendees prior to the event) and to participate in a 10-minute audience Q&A.

For those unable to attend, the lecture will be uploaded to NSW History Council's YouTube after the event.

The event takes place at 8.30am UK time / 17.30 Sydney/NSW time.

For tickets and more details visit Eventbrite.

Black and white interior of a large industrial hangar with steel girder frame and fenced-off heavy industrial machinery in foreground and middle distance

Cockatoo Island Industrial Plant by Boyd159 via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

Monday, 31 August 2020

Marginalised Voices in Criminology

Call for Chapters

Kelly Stockdale and Michelle Addison have issued a call for chapters to contribute to a planned edited book: ‘Marginalised Voices in Criminology: Theory, Criminal Justice, and Contemporary Research’.

This inter-disciplinary and international collection seeks to engage with discussions and debates around power, colonialism, and identity, and how the criminological curriculum (re)produces doxa grounded in hegemony and privilege.

Authors interested in contributing should submit a 250-word abstract to kelly.stockdale@northumbria.ac.uk by 30 October 2020.

More details are provided in the full call, available to download or view below.

Sunday, 30 August 2020

New book by Dr Anastasia Dukova

To Preserve and Protect: Policing Colonial Brisbane

Dr Anastasia Dukova has recently published a new book To Preserve and Protect: Policing Colonial Brisbane (University of Queensland Press, 2020). For more information, see the publisher's website: https://www.uqp.com.au/books/to-preserve-and-protect-policing-colonial-brisbane

Book description:

"This book is a study of the police of Brisbane from 1828 to the early 1900s. It examines the individuals and the institution, and traces the transition from convict police to the professional, centrally organised Queensland Police Force. Sociology demonstrates that individuals and society, biography and history are inextricably linked: an individual ‘lives out a biography, and lives it out within some historical sequence. By the fact of this living, [the individual] contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of this society and to the course of history, even as [they are] made by society and by its historical push and shove.’ (Mills) This book explores the inner life and external career of a variety of individuals, including colonial police officers Peter ‘Duff’ Murphy, Samuel Sneyd, Samuel Lloyd, Thomas Tyrrell and James Nethercote, as well as the criminals they policed, such as Susan McGowan and Charles Durant. By recreating the biographies of these individuals and placing them within the wider setting of the police organisation and the society it served, To Preserve and Protect: Policing Colonial Brisbane reveals how the colonial society both formed and was formed by the individuals within it. In its essence, this book is a history of interactions between the police and the policed."

Advance reviews:

‘These colonial stories are vitally important for our organisation to remember and celebrate as they map our heritage and journey over the past two centuries. This book also illustrates the crucial changes and developments that have shaped our organisation over the past 155 years. I am proud to reflect on the unique Brisbane policing history and acknowledge our journey.’ - Katarina Carroll, Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service

‘To Preserve and Protect is an example of criminal justice history at its best … incorporating the voices of both police and the policed to provide a unique perspective on Brisbane’s past.’ - Professor Dean Wilson, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, UK

Book cover with large lettering on purple background, a fancy knot illustration.

Thursday, 11 June 2020

Call for Papers: Legacies of Empire

Punishment and Society Special Issue

Submissions are sought for a special issue of the journal Punishment and Society, to be titled ‘Legacies of Empire’.

The Guest Editors say:

The special issue will examine the global legacy of empire and colonialism through its effects on the penal regimes and practices of former colonies. Submissions are sought which explore the historical patterns of penal journeys as well as the contemporary legacy of many of these phenomena, including the aftermath of colonial policies on Indigenous communities. Contributions are sought from history, sociology, law, and criminology, capturing interdisciplinary work in which the concept of ‘empire’ is broadly conceived, and which contribute to the field of punishment and society (e.g. through literature, theory, empirical material).

For scholars of crime and punishment, greater commitment than ever is necessary to engage with perspectives that critique the times in which we live. The intention of this special issue is to further the democratization of criminological knowledge and to create a space for voices which embrace southern criminological and postcolonial perspectives. We particularly welcome submissions from scholars based in the Global South.

Abstracts of 500 words should be sent to the guest editors (email below) by 15th August 2020. Submissions are received on a competitive basis and will be reviewed by the guest editors. A selection will be accepted and the full manuscript subject to peer review (deadline for submission of final manuscript TBC with contributors at a later date).

Guest editors:
Lizzie Seal (University of Sussex, UK)
Bharat Malkani (Cardiff University, UK)
Lynsey Black (Maynooth University, Ireland)
Florence Seemungal (University of the West Indies Open Campus, Trinidad and Tobago)
Roger Ball (University of Sussex, UK)

A black and white aerial photograph of a coastal region with distant mountains, harbour area, jetties and land promontories.

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (undated, author unknown) via pxfuel.com

Wednesday, 10 June 2020

Call for contributions: Times of Crisis

BSC Summer Newsletter

The British Society of Criminology (BSC) has announced the theme of its summer newsletter as ‘Times of Crisis’. They invite the submission of short articles (1,500 - 2000 words) on this theme from a criminological perspective.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, COVID 19 and its criminological implications and protests which started recently in the United States and Hong Kong but which are now resonating around the world.

Submissions are welcome from academics and practitioners. The deadline is 13 July 2020. If you would like to submit an article please contact Lizzie Seal by 15 June 2020.

Black and white photograph of a large crowd of people, possibly numbering thousands, some carrying placards, on the streets of a city at night. There are high-rise buildings and neon lights in the background.

'Hong Kong Protests 2014' by taichi87 via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA

Tuesday, 9 June 2020

New book series launched

Emerald Advances in Historical Criminology

A new book series in historical criminology has recently been launched - 'Emerald Advances in Historical Criminology' - which aims to publish exciting and original work which uses historical perspectives and approaches to enrich scholarship in criminology. The series is edited by David Churchill (University of Leeds and #HCNet Chair) and Christopher Mullins (Southern Illinois University), and supported by a broad international editorial board.

The series embraces a broad, pluralistic understanding of ‘the historical’ and its potential applications to criminology, and it provides an inclusive platform for a range of approaches which, in various ways, seek to orient criminological enquiry to history or to the dynamics of historical time. It welcomes both conventional studies in the history of crime and criminal justice and innovative and experimental work which extends the conceptual, theoretical, methodological and topical range of historical criminology. It also encourages historical scholarship on non-traditional topics in criminology (such as environmental harms, war and state crime) and inventive modes of theorising and practising historical research (including processual approaches and futures research). The series aims to develop a genuinely international body of scholarship in historical criminology and welcomes proposals from established and early career scholars.

More information on the series is available on the publisher’s website at the following link: https://books.emeraldinsight.com/page/series-detail/Emerald-Advances-In-Historical-Criminology/ If you have an idea for a book that might fit with the series, please get in touch either with David (d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk) or Christopher (mullinsc@siu.edu).

Illustration from John Reynolds, Triumphs of Gods Revenge and the Crying and Execrable Sin of (Wilful and Premeditated) Murther (London: A.M. for William Lee, 1670) via Public Domain Review.

Monday, 8 June 2020

New book published on history of private security

Private Security and the Modern State

A new book on the history of private security has been published, featuring the work of several #HCNet members.

Private Security and the Modern State: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by David Churchill, Dolores Janiewski and Pieter Leloup, is the first international study of the history of private security. Drawing together researchers from criminology, socio-legal studies and history, the book examines multiple forms of 'private security' - including detective agencies, insurance companies, moral campaigners, employers’ associations, paramilitary organizations, self-protection and vigilantism - in Britain, the US, France, Belgium and Germany across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken together, these studies offer a nuanced assessment of the historical evolution of private security and its fluid, contested and mutually constitutive relationship with state agencies, public policing and the criminal justice system.

The book is published by Routledge in the 'SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice Histories' series. More information is available here: https://www.routledge.com/Private-Security-and-the-Modern-State-Historical-and-Comparative-Perspectives/Churchill-Janiewski-Leloup/p/book/9780367183493

Book cover image reading SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice by Routledge titled Private Security and the Modern State: Historical and Comparative Perspectives edited by David Churchill, Dolores Janiewski and Pieter Leloup. The central image is a black and white illustration of a mustachioed man in a long-coat and hat resembling a uniform grabbing the shoulder of a hatless man in a long coat. The onlooking women behind are in formal black Victorian dress.

Monday, 11 May 2020

HCNet online workshop

Registration open

#HCNet, The British Society of Criminology's Historical Criminology Network, is pleased to announce plans for a workshop which will be held online on 15 June 2020. Registration is open now and closes on Monday 1 June.

The workshop is designed to bring together scholars to initiate conversations around common interests or new directions for research in criminology, and follows an earlier call for ideas.

Interested participants are welcome irrespective of disciplinary or institutional affiliation; participants do not have to be existing members of the Historical Criminology Network or the British Society of Criminology.

Registration instructions, programme and information on each of the working groups is available to view and download below. All times refer to UK: GMT+1 (BST).

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