Emma Cunningham

I am thoroughly enjoying my work at the fabulously diverse University of East London. As a working class academic I have adopted an intersectional feminist approach to my research, teaching, and engagement which tackles some of the most urgent problems across policing. I am interested in how police culture remains toxic, how stop and search impacts community relations and how policewomen continue to undertake their role and responsibilities, remain resilient and stay in policing even given their own lived-experiences. At its heart, my scholarly activities are driven by a pursuit of equality, diversity and social justice and my work has made important contributions to our understanding of the history of women’s integration in policing and the arguments of sameness and difference which were used and applied to women, contributing to a deeper understanding of the challenges women in policing face and have faced. I have been asked by different media outlets for my expert comments for articles in The Guardian and INEWS, and I have made appearances on T.V programmes such as BBC NEWS Channel, Sky News, Channel 5 News and on the radio for 5 Live, BBC Wales and BBC Hertfordshire and Worcester. In working for UEL I have become involved in networks, blogs, and in writing short articles for the Sunday Times and Open Access Government articles about policing, misogyny and the toxic culture recently exposed in policing. I am asking questions about participation, in/exclusion, and using creative methods and approaches to present a more nuanced and complicated picture of policing problems.