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I am also available for joint supervision in the disciplines of Law, Politics and Sociology. 

I am currently supervising doctoral students working on policing and democracy in Scotland and Northern Ireland (Fiona McGrath), experience of family violence among South Asian Muslim women in Scotland (Nughmana Mirza), and community policing in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Jarrett Blaustein), community policing in Scotland (Diarmid Harkin), state formation, police and army in Cyprus (Lambros Kaoullas), minorities in new states (Andris Kokins) and policy making in Bulgaria (Mihail Petkov).  

Follow Andy on academia.edu

Office hours 2010-11

'Drop in' office hours will be held between 1400 and 1530 hrs on Tuesdays during teaching weeks in the spring. For anything that falls outside this, please contact Andy directly to arrange an appointment. 

Qualifications

• MA (Edinburgh), MSc (Cardiff), PhD (Cardiff)
  

Biographical statement

I joined the Social Policy subject group in January 2006 while working on a doctoral thesis on post-war criminal justice reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  The thesis, 'Making the Transition: International intervention, state-building and criminal justice reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995-2005' was successfully defended before Professor Dirk van Zyl Smit (Nottingham) and Professor Michael Levi (Cardiff) in January 2008. 

Before starting the doctorate I worked as a Research Officer for the Home Office, primarily engaged on analysis of crime data on the English regions and Wales.  I also collaborated on the development of a digest of historical crime and criminal justice data for Wales.  Previously I was employed by Cardiff University as a Research Associate, working as the primary field researcher on an evaluation of a multi-agency robbery reduction initiative in central Bristol.

My primary research interests include criminal justice reforms in post-authoritarian and post-conflict societies, with a particular focus on Bosnia and Herzegovina; the role of international agencies in agenda setting; and criminal justice policy more generally.

More recently, I have started working on the role of criminal justice agencies in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. 

Teaching, MSc and Undergraduate Supervision

I co-direct the new MSc in Global Crime, Justice and Security , a joint Law and Social and Political Science programme running from September 2009.  I teach on the following courses in the School of Social and Political Science and School of Law:

• 'Politics of the Welfare State' (undergraduate);
• 'Analytical Perspectives in Social Policy', 'Criminal Justice Policy and Practice' and 'International Criminal Justice: Policy and Politics' (honours);
• 'Comparative Analysis of Social and Public Policy', 'Crime, Justice and Public Policy', 'Criminal Justice and Penal Process',  'Global Crime, Justice and Security: Theories and Frameworks', 'Global Crime, Justice and Security in Context' (MSc).  

In 2009-10 I supervised undergraduate dissertations on EU conditionality and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and on prison conditions in Albania. I also supervised a range of post-graduate dissertations in the general field of crime and criminal justice, but covering a diverse set of topics including police reform in Georgia, genocide in Bosnia, the development and spread of international instruments against money laundering, and mechanisms to tackle human trafficking in Greece. 

In the past I have supervised honours dissertations on the implementation of the smoking ban in Scotland, food and diet in Young Offenders Institutions, reducing reoffending, and restorative justice.  I have supervised a number of MSc dissertations, including policy transfer in criminal justice, policing in South Africa and Northern Ireland, welfare and penal regimes, and policy responses to prostitution in Sweden and England. 

Research and consultancy

With support from the Edinburgh Campaign and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, I am currently developing a pilot project exploring the role of policing agencies in crimes against humanity. 

In early 2004 I undertook a short data scoping exercise for the Wales National Offender Management Service (NOMS) pathfinder project to support future work on identifying offenders' needs (see Aitchison, Attwell and Maguire [2004] in publications, below).   

Publications

Books

Aitchison, A (2011) Making the Transition: international Intervention, State-Building and Criminal Justice Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Antwerp: Intersentia. 

You can see Andy discussing this book in conversation with Claire Lightowler of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research here.

Journal Articles

Aitchison, A. (forthcoming) Governing through Crime Internationally? Bosnia and Herzegovina. In: British Journal of Politics and International Relations (accepted April 2012).  

Aitchison, A. (2010) Global meets Local: International Participation in Prison Reform and Restructuring in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In: Criminology and Criminal Justice 10(1), pp. 77-94. 

Aitchison, A. (2007) Police Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina: State, Democracy and International Assistance.  In: Policing and Society 17(4), pp. 321-343. 

Chapters

Aitchison, A. (2010) 'Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing' in Brookman, F., Maguire, M., Pierpoint, H. and Bennett, T. (eds.) Handbook of Crime. Cullompton: Willan.  

Further selected published reports and analyses

Aitchison, A. and Hodgkinson, J. (2003) 'Patterns of Crime in England and Wales' in Simmons, J. and Dodd, T. (eds.) Crime in England and Wales 2002/03, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 7/03, London: Home Office.

Aitchison, A. and Kynch, J. (2004) Crime and Victimisation in Wales: Results from the British Crime Survey 2001/02. Cardiff: RDS/Welsh Assembly Government Community Safety Unit.

Conference papers and guest seminars

(With Jarret Blaustein) Policing, Democracy, Pacification and Trust, at Reconciliation and Trust-Building in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a two-day workshop, School of Divinity, Edinburgh University, December 2011. 

(With Jarrett Blaustein) "Is Everything Really OK?" Democratizing the Police in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the American Society of Criminology, Washington D.C. November 2011.

Understanding transformation and non-transformation in transitional contexts, at the European Society of Criminology Conference, Vilnius, September 2011. 

Penal Politics, Social Science and Public Policy. The Social and Political Coordinates of Knowledge Production (Response to Joachim Savelsberg, Ian Loader and Richard Sparks). GERN Interlabo: Civic criminologies for late-modern societies: evidence and policy in European perspective. Edinburgh, May 2011.

Global Uncertainties (Round-table, with Cormac MacAmhlaigh and Andrew Neal), at the Centre for Law and Society, The University of Edinburgh, January 2010.

Exploring police activities during armed conflict: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and Macedonia, at the European Society of Criminology Conference, Ljubljana, September 2009.

Police and Human Rights Abuse in the Context of War: Evidence from the ICTY, at the British Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Cardiff, June 2009.

'Governing through Crime' in an international context: the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the European Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Edinburgh, September 2008.

Global meets local: international participation in prison reform and restructuring in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the European Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Bologna, September 2007. 

Criminal justice reform and state building: the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, invited speaker at the Centre for Law and Society, The University of Edinburgh, January 2007. 

The shaping of penality in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the British Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Glasgow, July 2006.

Security between the second and third pillar: EU, policing and state in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the European Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Krakow, August 2005.

Affiliations and other professional activities

I am a member of the British Society of Crimnology, the European Society of Criminology, the Political Studies Association, the Scottish Institute for Policing Research and an associate of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.  

I have reviewed articles for Policing and Society, Punishment and Society, Europe Asia Studies, the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, Millennium, and the European Journal of Social Security and am happy to review other work in line with my areas of interest. I have reviewed monograph proposals for Ashgate, Routledge and Willan. 

What I'm reading

I'm having a bit of a Chandler-fest at the moment (see his site for details of his work) and am looking forward to Andreas' Blue Helmets and Black Markets that arrived over the weekend. .   

 

PhD in Social Policy