***Presentation Slides Available Here***

The first in the Northern Research Police of Autumn 2023.

Presenter: Vesa Huotari, Senior researcher, Police University College, Finland, vesa.huotari@polamk.fi

Chair: Vesa Muttilainen, Police University College, Finland, vesa.muttilainen@polamk.fi

The division of academic work, i.e. the fact of disciplines, provides for the growth of knowledge, but, mostly, within each of them only. This state of affairs leaves a lot to wish for from the point of view of anyone pursuing improvement in the performance of the police. After outlining the problem, I shall discuss briefly how to approach the challenge and do my best in demonstrating it by carving out the dilemmas that undermine the effectiveness of policing traffic/roads. We should better understand the complexities in policing, not just declare it being such. The presentation is an introduction to theoretically motivated and practice oriented research on the police & policing.

Vesa Huotari, PhD (education) is a senior researcher at Police University College. In his career at the Police College he has tackled a wide range of research topics from police education, leadership, equality, evaluation of effectiveness, innovations, to technology. While he all but abhor empiricist approaches, whether quantitative or qualitative, he is most at home with questions that relate to philosophical, methodological and theoretical dimensions in research.