Justice, Rights, Security and Conflict Research Theme

Security, conflict, justice and rights and their complex interrelationships constitute major contemporary challenges facing governments (national and local), international organisations, statutory and voluntary sector organisations, the private sector and citizens alike. The trans-national nature and flow of crime and security risks, their potential to cause conflict and their impact on rights and justice have raised questions about the appropriate scale of preventive interventions, and systems of governance and social order at the international, national and sub-national level. Understanding and responding to the challenges of security and insecurity demands a rethinking of the role and nature of governmental responsibility and accountability, an appreciation of the ways in which local responses are informed and influenced by international trends and developments as well as of the ways international and national normative systems interact. Justice, rights, and security provisions are embedded in wider legal, social and political processes, in which power, authority and resources are at stake. This raises deep theoretical questions about competing forms of power, authority, punishment and normative and structural modes of ordering at the international and national level.

Understanding the governance of contemporary security challenges presented by local, regional and international conflicts and their implications for justice and rights are at the forefront of the research agendas of national, European and international research funding bodies.

At Glasgow, research on security and its complex relationships with questions of justice and rights is undertaken from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: most notably criminology, law, politics, international relations, sociology, social policy, cultural studies, and urban studies. The focus of the ASRF Justice, Rights and Security research theme will be to draw together this expertise within the University of Glasgow to promote inter-disciplinary research and develop an innovative research and knowledge exchange programme with the aim of enhancing conceptual and empirical understanding in a number of important areas, including:

• The governance of security, especially with regard to relationships between local, national, regional and emerging global institutions for delivering security governance and for governance accountability.
• Transnational crime, organised crime, and other ‘global’ and ‘globalised’ forms of crime and security threats (including issues of cyber-security, energy security and environmental resource conflict), and the internationalisation and impact of different forms of regulatory, justice and other crime control mechanisms.
• Security, social justice, human rights and the regulation of conflict, especially with regard to global imbalances of power, democratisation and processes of social change.
• Terrorism and tensions around counter-terrorism policies and the implications of such policies for justice and rights.