Dr Ana Aliverti has been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize to support her research into law enforcement.

The PLP is awarded to scholars who have made and continue to make significant and original contributions to knowledge in their field of research, and who have influenced their field sufficiently to have had an international impact. In 2017, up to 30 awards were made to UK-based outstanding research scholars within six subject areas, including Law.

The Prize will support Ana’s existing research on the novel configurations of law enforcement in a global age. She will spend the next two years researching police-immigration cooperation in domestic policing in the UK.

Ana commented “I am both excited and proud for receiving this distinction. The Prize will allow me to undertake pioneering research which, given its strong empirical component, I would not have been able to carry out without it.”

The new policy emphasis on foreign nationals in British domestic policing has brought to the fore the role of the police in mediating belonging and shaping the boundaries of citizenship. Ana’s new research will investigate how this iconic function of the police in delimiting civic inclusion is put to work in the everyday policing of global mobility.

As the police are at the forefront of efforts to block, contain and channel through people on the move, their role as arbiters of membership acquires centrality while ideas about civil order and justice are reformulated. Simultaneously, global mobility policing legitimizes extraterritorial interventions and is determined by processes happening away from the territorial borders.

Despite the expansion of police-immigration cooperation in ordinary policing work and its potential for operating outside the remits of social justice, little empirical research has been hitherto conducted to document and scrutinize these significant changes. When asked about her future research, Ana said “I will be travelling around the country and further afield in the next year, and I will finalise a book based on my findings.”

The Prize will contribute unique insight into new policing practices in highly diverse cities, while offering a novel and refreshing analysis of contemporary law enforcement amid growing public hostility about migration in Britain and elsewhere.