This page maps out and introduces the main areas of research work in which I have been and continue to be engaged. It serves as a gateway to sections and pages of the site dealing with research and covers the past, present and future. To some extent, this part of the site provides a repository, archive and index, and commentary in relation to many years of work already done. But it also conveys information and reflection about ongoing and future research activities.
There is quite a lot to be viewed here, and is mainly retrospective. Well, it has been quite a long career, I suppose. The pages here combine the serious with the entertaining, the playful with the insightful. Hopefully, it will be revealing.
This is for reference, a kind of bibliography. There is a single pdf file of all my academic publications to date, but also more manageable files: monographs, edited collections. academic papers in successive decades, and shorter pieces.
Collectors alert ! A retail point. Here there is a list of my books and other publications, copies of which may be purchased (wishful thinking ?) for a nominal price plus the cost of postage, To be honest, it is a way of dealing with problems of space.
Abstracts, especially in the context of academic writing, are invaluable.As indeed are all summaries. Older novels had helpful summaries at the start of each new chapter (worth continuing with the read, or perhaps, skip this one ?) Writing abstracts is not easy, and is a fine art. Here are some of mine.
Study of the legal control and criminology of business cartels has been a major research preoccupation and activity for me since the 1990s and has resulted in a large body of published work, and also collaboration which researchers elsewhere, notably Julian Joshua (Brussels), Caron Beaton-Wells (Melbourne), and Andreas Stefan (East Anglia). Between 2012 and 2014 I received funding from the Leverhulme Trust to analyse the effectiveness of legal control in this area (the 'Cartel Biographies' project), working with Jennifer Edwards. Contained here are a collection of informative and intriguing odds and ends associated with this research activity.
This has been another major tranche of my research activity over the past twenty years, dealing in particular with the emergence of 'EU criminal law', whatever that may be - see the poem 'From Positivist Fourth Street to the Strawberry Fields' in the 'Recent Work' page here. Again, this is a collection of what I feel could be informative and intriguing bits and pieces in relation to this area of research. Notable collaborators around Europe include Estella Baker, Joanna Banach-Gutierrez and Vanessa Franssen.
As a student, I toyed with the idea of majoring in History or English rather than Law, but in the end took my degree in Law (or Jurisprudence in Oxonian speak). A wise choice ? I leave that to the judgment of others. But historical research (as well as an examination of the literary) has always been a component of what I do, and I had the temerity to publish in The Historical Journal, Criminal Justice History, and the like. We ignore our history at our peril. And this interest remains strong today - if anything, stronger and more ambitious, as may be seen from some of the pages here.
As they say, 'no rest for the wicked', 'from the cradle to the grave', or even, in Donne's wonderful lines, 'Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy, until I labour, I in labour lie'. So, it continues, and I hope in a way that is valuable and interesting. I report on it here.
This will provide a convenient index and glossary of my significant research activity and outcomes over time.
How many readers look at or study the preface to a book ? Admittedly prefaces may be of variable interest, Yet a good preface should inform, entice and even entertain. Like abstract writing, prefacing is a fine art, and at its best may whet the appetite. Here are some of my own efforts.
My research continues, in a number of different areas. In the course of researching and writing, many occasional ideas and observations occur – brief interesting and diverting notions, really – which seem worth communicating to the world at large. Here they are.