ODID Junior Research Fellow Dr Oliver Owen has won a four-month Knowledge Exchange Fellowship funded by the ESRC to pursue his research with the Nigerian Police Force, to be overseen by Professor Jocelyn Alexander.

Dr Owen will work with the policing assistance component of Justice for All (J4A), a DfID-funded programme implemented by the British Council to work with the Nigerian Police Force on internal reforms to make them more effective and accountable.

He will use his doctoral fieldwork, an ethnographic study of policing in Nigeria, to draw out insights with potential impact on reform processes and working practices.

He aims to discuss these and their practical implications with both the policing assistance team (trainers and programme staff) and, with J4A's facilitation, with senior police officers to see both how they can incorporate insights from the research, but also how their practical knowledge can inform the research process. The research will therefore involve a two-way dialogue between three parties - the researcher, the police assistance/training team, and the police.

From 2014, the ESRC is funding knowledge exchange activities through Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAAs), block awards made to Research Organisations to accelerate the impact of research.