Dr Julie Berg
- Senior Lecturer in Criminology (Sociological & Cultural Studies)
telephone:
0141 330 1772
email:
Julie.Berg@glasgow.ac.uk
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4730-1778Biography
Dr Julie Berg is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Social and Political Sciences, and the Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR), at the University of Glasgow. She joined the University of Glasgow in January 2018, having previously held a full-time research and teaching appointment at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is a senior research fellow in the Global Risk Governance Programme at the University of Cape Town.
Julie co-leads a global multi-disciplinary team of scholars, the Small Islands Security Governance Research Group, which aims to build networks, engage in dialogue and conduct research intended to advance how security governance in small islands is conceptualised, understood, and approached.
The objectives of the group are to:
- Advance understandings of island jurisdictions as spaces with historical and cultural complexities compounded by interfaces with colonialism and other externalities;
- Contextualise crime, violence, harm, and victimhood in Small Island Developing States;
- Conduct research on various aspects of security governance in small islands informed by understandings of indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and mobilisations; and
- Improve conceptual and evidence bases to inform sustainable development and security agendas in small islands.
Research interests
My research interests include state and non-state policing, and plural or polycentric security governance. I am principally interested in the nature of plurality in security governance through the mapping out of state and non-state nodes within increasingly pluralized environments and the particular role of the private sector (for instance, private security) in these environments. In light of the emergence of new global harms or harmscapes, I am interested in exploring the impacts of new risk harmscapes on security institutions, collaborative arrangements, and democratic policing. Furthermore, I am interested in the contextual factors that impact on pluralised forms of security governance (for instance, the shifting nature of public space, power relations, and public policing provision); the impacts of new and advanced technologies on collaborative and pluralized policing; as well as the impacts of plural policing on achieving inclusive and equitable security governance in line with a public or common good (with a particular focus on legitimacy, accountability, and democratic security provision). Further to this, I am interested in the impact of new and emerging global harmscapes and associated responses, on the evolution of criminology as a field of inquiry as well as exploring the nature and implications of a decolonised criminology, particularly given the disproportionate impact of new harms (such as climate change) on the Global South/LMICs and the need for innovative responses and an adaptive criminology.
Research groups
- Criminology
Grants
2021 - 2022 Accounting for Complexities: An Intersectional Approach to Enhancing Police Practitioner Accountability, Legitimacy and Sustainable Reform (PI), funded by Police Scotland, the Scottish Institute for Policing Research and the Scottish Police Authority.
2021 - 2022 Tracing Informal and Illicit Plastic Waste Disposal in the Maldives (Co-I), funded by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research Development Grant
2020 - 2021 New Research and Teaching Pathways in the Digital Age: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities for Criminologists and Sociologists During Covid-19 (Co-I), funded by the U21 Researcher Resilience Fund
2018 – 2019 Network on Intelligence and Security Practices in African Countries (NISPAC) (Co-I), funded by Scottish Funding Council and Global Challenges Research Fund
2018 Democratic Security Governance for the Public Good: Harnessing the Capacities of Non-state Security Nodes (PI), funded by John Robertson Bequest, University of Glasgow
2017 Research Chair in Justice and Security, South African Research Chairs Initiative, funded by the Department of Science and Technology, National Research Foundation, South Africa
2017 Political Assassination in South Africa (PI), funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa
2015 – 2016 Design of Standard Operating Procedures and Models for Community Police Forums in the Western Cape (Co-I), funded by the Western Cape Provincial Government, South Africa
2015 – 2016 Design of Standard Operating Procedures and Models for Neighbourhood Watches in the Western Cape(PI), funded by the Western Cape Provincial Government, South Africa
2015 – 2016 Urban Safety, Violence and Crime in South African Cities (Co-I), funded by the South African Cities Network and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
2015 – 2016 Strengthening Responses to Challenges of Crime, Corruption, Drugs and Terrorism: A Guide for Development Practitioners (Co-I), funded by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
2010 – 2011 A Whole-of-Society Approach to Safety in the Western Cape (Co-I), funded by the Western Cape Provincial Government, South Africa
2010 – 2011 Towards Sustainable Public-Private Partnership Policing in South Africa: A Study of Major Events Policing in the City of Cape Town (PI), funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa
2008 Audit of Police Oversight in Africa (PI), funded by the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum
2008 Survey on the Civilian Oversight Committee of the Metro Police (PI), funded by the City of Cape Town, South Africa
2006 Pluralisation of Policing in Cape Town (PI), funded by the National Research Foundation, South Africa
Supervision
I am interested in supervising research projects in the broad areas of policing and security governance, with a particular interest in projects which focus on any of the following themes:
- Plural policing, partnership policing, security networks, nodal governance or polycentric security governance
- Non-state policing, private security, community safety or non-state organised violence
- Everyday security responses to climate harms, climate gating
- Police/policing reform, regulation and accountability or democratic policing
Teaching
Current
Undergraduate
- Criminology, climate change and the environment (lecturer)
Past
Undergraduate
- Crime, Violence, and Social Control in Africa (course convener and lecturer)
- Sociology 1B: Critical Research in Contemporary Societies (lecturer)
Postgraduate
- Criminology Dissertation: Methods Lab (course convener and lecturer)
- Criminal Justice: Current Issues, Comparative Challenges (lecturer)
- Criminological Perspectives on Security and Globalisation (course convener and lecturer)
- Criminological Theory in Context (course convener and lecturer)
Additional information
Roles and affiliations:
- Associate Director (Internationalisation) of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (2020-2022)
- PGT Criminology Convenor (2019-2022, 2024)
- External Examiner, Postgraduate LLM, Criminology Subject Area, Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh (2018-2022)
- Member, European Society of Criminology (2020 - )
- Member, British Society of Criminology (2018 - )
- Member, Criminological and Victimological Society of Southern Africa (2007 - )
- Editorial Board member, Acta Criminologica (2013 - )
- Senior research fellow, Global Risk Governance Programme, University of Cape Town, South Africa (2017 - )
