The Police and Prisons in the Global South Network aims to support critical, interdisciplinary social science research and teaching on the politics of policing and imprisonment in the Global South, and to support the efforts of scholars working in this field to speak to audiences beyond academia.
The network builds on a growing interest among social scientists in the political significance of police and prisons in Global South contexts, marked by efforts to move beyond the narrow analytical concerns, eurocentrism and uncritical assumptions which have characterised some work on these themes in the past.
Recent work has brought the study of police and prisons into disciplines including political science, anthropology, sociology and IR. Doing so has opened up important new angles in debates about such diverse issues as the state, citizenship, political violence, race, neoliberalism, gender, urban politics, and colonialism and its legacies.
However, with few resources available to connect scholars working on these themes, such research and teaching has remained very fragmented across different disciplines and areas of regional expertise. It is this fragmentation that the Police and Prisons in the Global South Network seeks to overcome.
The network aims to:
- Support the efforts of scholars working on these themes to build relationships and foster debates that transcend disciplinary siloes and areas of regional expertise
- Support connections between scholars working on these themes at institutions in the Global South and the Global North
- Support connections between scholars and activists, social movements, NGOs, communities affected by systems of policing and imprisonment, and others outside academia who share an interest in these issues
- Support the dissemination of scholarly knowledge about these themes to broad audiences beyond academia
Police and Prisons in the Global South Network 