Dr Alistair Harkness, senior lecturer in Criminology and co-director of the Centre for Rural Criminology, has been appointed as a Visiting International Fellow at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom.

Dr Alistair Harkness, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at UNE and Co-director of the Centre for Rural Criminology

The primary purpose of the Visiting International Fellowship is to enable the development of collaborative scholarship between the Fellow and members of Surrey’s Department of Sociology.

Alistair will be working closely with Professor Karen Bullock at Surrey as the Visiting Fellow to produce a cross national analysis of the police use of social media in rural settings in New South Wales, Victoria, the United Kingdom and France.

The project will also draw upon the expertise and input of the other co-director of the Centre, Dr Kyle Mulrooney, and Dr Christian Mouhanna, the Director of the Centre de recherche sociologique sur le droit et les institutions pénales (Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Criminal Justice Institutions) in Paris.

Alistair said that he was thrilled to have been unanimously endorsed by the University of Surrey selection committee for this important role.

“As a co-director of the Centre for Rural Criminology at UNE, I see enormous potential for a long, lively and mutually beneficial partnership evolving with the significant applied work being undertaken by both the Centre here and at Surrey.

“Importantly, there will be a suite of research outcomes and opportunities for public engagement from this fellowship as well.

“What will flow from this will be yet further evidence of our work here in rural criminology as internationally recognised public criminologists”, he said.

The Fellowship comes with a research funding allocation of £2,000 (approximately $3,800) which will enable the collection and dissemination of high-quality empirical data.