‘Little Gunshots, but with the blaze of lightning’: Xavier Herbert, Visuality and Human Rights

Xavier Herbert published his bestseller Capricornia in 1938, following two periods spent in the Northern Territory. His next major work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975), was not published until thirty-seven years later, but was also set in the north during the 1930s. One significant difference between the two novels is that by 1975 photo-journalism had become a significant force for influencing public opinion and reforming Aboriginal policy. Herbert’s novel, centring upon Prindy as vulnerable Aboriginal child, marks a sea change in perceptions of Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society, and a radical shift toward use of photography as a means of revealing the violation of human rights after World War II. In this article I review Herbert’s visual narrative strategies in the context of debates about this key historical shift and the growing impact of photography in human rights campaigns. I argue that Poor Fellow My Country should be seen as a textual re-enactment, set in Herbert’s and the nation’s past, yet coloured by more recent social changes that were facilitated and communicated through the camera’s lens. Like all re-enactments, it is written in the past conditional: it asks, what if things had been different? It poses a profound challenge to the state project of scientific modernity that was the Northern Territory over the first decades of the twentieth century

Aspects of the Labour Market for New Graduates in Ireland - 1982-1997

Using a survey on the first destinations of award recipients in higher education from 1982 to 1997, the trend in first destinations and starting salaries for primary level graduates in Ireland is studied. The data show that despite large increases in supply throughout the 1980s, the average real wage received by recent graduates increased by 25 per cent over the decade. This phenomenon is explained by a combination of rising emigration and increasing demand during the period. With the onset of economic recession in 1990 and lower levels of emigration and demand, the real wage fell between 1990 and 1995. The paper finds that the increase in supply during this period was the main reason for the fall in real wages.

Future worlds: threats and opportunities for policing and security

An article about the threats and opportunities for policing and security in the future operating environment for public and private sector capabilities and capacities

Communications Networks and Foreign Direct: Investment in Developing Countries

It is widely accepted that investment is essential for the long-term economic growth of developing countries. There is some evidence that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in developing countries provides spill-over benefits through technology and skills transfer. Understanding the determinants of FDI inflows into developing countries is therefore an important policy objective. This paper shows that average FDI inflows into developing countries are greater in countries that have better telecommunications networks. In more recent years, this relationship can also be detected between FDI and mobile networks. The analysis has been refined to take account of countries' endowment of natural resources and the an attempt has been made to deal with the problem of endogeneity.Africa; capital flows; foreign direct investment; investment risk; developing; countries and telecommunications

Place, space and community: a study of Extinction Rebellion and climate activism

A paper presented about an empirical study of emotions associated with climate activism, presented at the CCCU IRN conference 8-9th June 2022. The paper featured video media and verbatim theatre performance using anonymised data segments

What Lies Beneath? Understanding Recent Trends in Irish Mortgage Arrears

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of Irish mortgage arrears using a new loan-level dataset which incorporates data from four Irish banks. We identify the main characteristics of accounts in arrears and examine the role of ability-to-pay and equity factors in the recent hike in mortgage delinquency rates. We find that borrowers who took out their mortgage for buy-to-let purposes, those with high loan-to-value ratios and those with high repayment burdens are all more likely to be in arrears. This is also the case for borrowers with properties in regions that have suffered more severe economic shocks, as proxied for by changes in the regional unemployment rate. Our empirical analysis suggests that affordability issues and general macroeconomic developments have had an important and sizeable effect on arrears trends over time, suggesting that policy efforts to target the growing level of mortgage arrears need to take account of these issues.Debt, Mortgage Delinquency, Arrears, Default

The construction and shaping of protesters' perceptions of police legitimacy: a thematic approach to police information and intelligence gathering

This paper aims to examine antecedents and contingents associated with the construction and shaping of protesters’ perceptions of police legitimacy and provides a thematic approach to information and intelligence gathering in protest policing. It uses data obtained by qualitative interviews (N = 79) and non-participant observations at 13 protest events across London, between 2010 and 2015. Three inter-related themes are identified: 1) protester constructions of policing; 2) power and identity, and 3) levels of protester engagement and distancing. These suggest that protesters carry antecedent beliefs and are influenced by contingents during events, potentially leading to tensions that policing based on procedural fairness and respectful treatment alone, appear unlikely to ameliorate. The findings add to a growing recognition of the significance of context to perceptions of police legitimacy and provide police leaders and practitioners with a thematic approach that can be applied to the facilitation and management of protest

This is not a drill: scoping police and partnership preparedness for the consequences of climate change

Paper presentation to BSC Annual Conference 2023 at UCLan Panel A Green criminology and environmental justic

Responding to mental health incidents - Is policing about to abandon its social responsibility?

This is an opinion piece bylined by the author for Policing Insight. The piece argues that the recent move by the police to withdraw from attending mental health incidents unless they involve threats to life, is a betrayal of social responsibility