In Conversation with Dr Katy Sian, Senior Lecturer in sociology & Co Investigator for the Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre

Title: Implementing anti racism in policing research

Abstract: This talk will build upon an anti-racist research toolkit that I recently developed, and will examine how as researchers we can integrate an anti-racist approach to our work on policing. It will demonstrate why an anti racist framework is necessary for generating ethically driven research that centres social justice and meaningful change.

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Dr Katy Sian is the Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre’s lead for race and ethnicity. Race and Ethnicity is one of the cross-cutting themes of the Centre, which will be both embedded and represented across its research and practice. Katy’s role is to ensure that the Centre critically examines and reflects upon the complex ways in which communities of colour experience issues of vulnerability and policing.

Katy’s specific interests focus on developing critical conceptualisations of race and vulnerability as a way to better understand how they interconnect and play out in policing practices, both at structural and individual levels.

In addition to this, Katy is concerned with ensuring that research across the Centre is inclusive, collaborative, collective and representative. By encouraging a reflexive approach to research, the Centre can work towards generating projects that empower communities and create new knowledge formations through co-production, based upon ethical and action-orientated principles.

Katy’s broader work within the Centre focuses on embedding equality, diversity and inclusion values across the research community to help address inequalities, promote diversity in participation and perspectives, and ensure that research outputs are accessible and applicable to marginalised communities.

Katy is also part of the research team for one of the Centre’s ‘place-based’ projects, focusing specifically upon the Leeds area. The research will incorporate an emphasis on race to gain critical insights into how communities of colour both experience and access policing services and wider agencies.