Dr Megan McElhone

Overview

Biography

Dr Megan McElhone joined Birkbeck as a Lecturer in 2020. Her research concerns racialised policing, and she offers undergraduate and postgraduate modules based on her research expertise.

Raised on unceded Darug lands in Sydney, Australia, Megan completed her PhD in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. Her PhD thesis examined the New South Wales Police Force’s targeted and sustained policing of Middle Eastern people in Sydney between 1998 and 2018. Since moving to London to take up her post at Birkbeck, Megan has commenced research projects on the Metropolitan Police's use of powers contained in Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and Knife Crime Prevention Orders.

In addition to her primary programme of research on racialised policing, Megan has contributed to research projects at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Law School (University of Sydney), and at the Australian Human Rights Commission. These projects variously concerned the unlawful use of police strip search powers, miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions, and workplace sexual harassment.

Highlights

• Article 'Gangland and Task Force Gain: An alternative account of Middle Eastern Crime in Sydney, Australia' published in Critical Criminology.

• Article 'Over-policed and under-protected: Why does nothing change?', co-authored with Sarah Lamble, published by the Institute of Race Relations.

• Article 'Defund – not defend – the police: A response to Fleetwood and Lea', co-authored with Tom Kemp, Sarah Lamble and J.M. Moore, published in The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice.

• Research featured in the article 'A closer look at police powers' in BBK Magazine.

• Interviewed for the article 'Defunding the Police' in Public Finance Magazine.
  

• Article 'Knife Crime Prevention Orders: Punitive, not preventative' published online by Abolitionist Futures.

Qualifications

• PhD in Law, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, 2019

Web profiles

• Twitter

Professional memberships

• Editorial Review Board member: Policing: An International Journal

ORCID

0000-0003-1716-3941

Research

Research interests

• Racialised policing
• The work of ‘specialist’ police squads
• How space and place mediate police practice
• The relationships between police practice and legal rules/regulation

Research Centres and Institutes

• Steering Group member, Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image (BIMI)

Research clusters and groups

• Race, Gender and Culture research cluster
• Policy, Practice and Activism research cluster
• Regulation, Risk and Surveillance research cluster

Research projects

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Megan welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of her areas of research interest.

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Race, Crime and Justice (LACN014S7)
• Policing, Race and Justice (LACN025S7)
• Policing and Society (LALA112H5)

Publications

Business and community

Outreach

October 2023 - Discussant: '"Seeing Like a Cop": Visuality and Coloniality in Spaces of Gendered Criminalisation' with Dr Emma Russell.

April 2023 - Online article: 'Over-policed and under-protected: Why does nothing change?', co-authored with Sarah Lamble, published by the Institute of Race Relations.

June 2022 - Discussant: 'Blackscapes: Urban Precarity, State Violence and Insurgent Politics in a State of Non-Being' with Dr Jamie Amparo Alves.

May 2022 - 'In Conversation' event organised by Birkbeck Students' Union.

January 2022 - Research featured: in the article 'A closer look at police powers' in BBK Magazine.

July 2021 - Interview: for the article 'Defunding the Police' in Public Finance Magazine.

June 2021 - Online article: 'Knife Crime Prevention Orders: Punitive, not Preventative', written for Abolitionist Futures.

December 2020 - Webinar: 'Race, Policing and the City', part of the Urban Intersections seminar series at Birkbeck, University of London.