Principle Investigator
Dr Megan O’Neill is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee and has an extensive background of policing research with a focus on issues of social interaction in policing, both within the organisation and with the public and partners. Dr O’Neill’s work has included studies of football policing, Black Police Associations, community policing, partnership working and Police Community Support Officers. She has also studied policing in the private sector and urban surveillance, including the use of CCTV. Dr O’Neill was a contributor to the Lord Stevens Independent Commission on Policing published in 2013, was the Chair of the Policing Network for the British Society of Criminology for three years and contributed to the evidence base for Police Scotland’s 2026 programme. She currently advises Police Scotland in their reform of stop and search practice and policy. Dr O’Neill is the project leader for Nordic Eyes Online, as well as the lead for the UK researchers.
Recent publications include:
O’Neill, M. (forthcoming) Police Community Support Officers. Clarendon Series in Criminology, Oxford: University of Oxford Press.
O’Neill, M. (2015) ‘Police community support officers in England: a dramaturgical analysis’, Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy, First published online 25 March 2015 as doi:10.1080/10439463.2015.1020805.
O’Neill, M. (2014) ‘The case for the acceptable ‘other’: the impact of partnerships, PCSOs and Neighbourhood Policing on diversity in policing’, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice: 9 (1): 77-88. (Part of a special issue: Sixteen Years On – Examining the Role of Diversity within Contemporary Policing).
O’Neill, M. (2014) ‘Ripe for the Chop or the Public Face of Policing? PCSOs and Neighbourhood Policing in Austerity’, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 8 (3): 265-273.
O’Neill, M. and McCarthy, D. (2014) ‘(Re)Negotiating Police Culture through Partnership Working: Trust, Compromise and the ‘new’ Pragmatism’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 14(2): 143–159.
O’Neill, M and Loftus, B. (2013) ‘Policing of the Marginalised: The Everyday Contexts of Social Control’, Theoretical Criminology, 17(4): 437-454. (Online from 23 July 2013 on doi:10.1177/1362480613495084.)
Website: https://www.dundee.ac.uk/geography-environmental-science/staff/profile/megan-oneill.php