Profile

I am a Teaching Fellow in the Sociology Department, and an Assistant Professor (research-focussed) in the School of Law. My PhD was supervised in Applied Linguistics and Sociology here at Warwick University, and my research focuses broadly on bordering practices, anxiety, affective politics, and creative practice. I am particularly interested in the discursive realisations of policy in everyday practice, and in the affective dimensions of this enactment.

Research

My current ESRC-IAA funded research project focuses on the potentials afforded by arts and creative methods as a medium for effecting change in police practice. My particular interest is in productions and transformations from the 'bottom-up' - the ways in which, within creative spaces, policed communities might articulate policing as an endeavour, and might reimagine the very role and function of the police as an institution.

Publications

Lewis, R. and Hodgson, J. (forthcoming). 'Arts and Policing: imagining new approaches to police-community relationships?' In. Asquith, N. L., Rodgers, J., Clover, J., Cordner, G., Dwyer, A. & Ahmed, R. (Eds). Routledge International Handbook of Critical Policing. London and New York: Routledge.

Lewis, R. and Hodgson, J. 'Police engagement with and through the arts: an innovative approach to building trust and confidence?' (2023) Policing Insight

Hodgson, J. and Lewis, R. 'Policing, culture and community : West Midlands Police as City of Culture partners' (University of Warwick 2023)

Hodgson, J. and Lewis, R. 'Building trust in policing through arts collaboration' (University of Warwick; Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 2022)

Lewis, R. 'Anxious vigilance and the production of (il)legitimacy in the UK citizenship regime: “it’s how you sift them out, y’know?”' (2022) Conflict and Society vol 8(1)

Carvalho, H., Chamberlen, A., and Lewis, R. 'Punitiveness beyond criminal justice : punishable and punitive subjects in an era of prevention, anti-migration and austerity' (2020) The British Journal of Criminology vol 60(2)