Green placard held up outside UK Houses of Parliament. Placard reads: LIBERTY.
Release website homepage. Text across top reads: Law and rights; services; policy and news. Text below reads: 'regulating right, repairing wrongs: Exploring Equity and Social Justice Initiatives within UK Cannabis Reform'.
Photo Booth black and white picture of Koshka Duff with Chris Rossdale and Tom Kemp, smiling and laughing.
I think of my friends as blackbirds / screeching from rooftops ... they are wires stretched from city to city / in borrowed dresses and migraines
...
This is for those who never made it
— Sean Bonney

Knowledge-making and world-building will be collective or they will not be. I can’t name the countless many who’ve made my work (and life) possible. But I can point you towards a few of the incredible people and organisations I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with recently.

They include my co-authors, research networks I’m helping to build, NGOs, journalists, and other ‘knowledge-exchange partners’ outside academia. Click to find out more about our past and ongoing projects.

  • Knowledge-Exchange Partner

    Human rights organisation. I am currently working with Liberty to create accessible versions of my research findings around police strip-searching for campaigners, policy-makers, and the general public.

    I previously contributed in an advisory capacity to Liberty’s Holding Our Own: A Guide To Non-Policing Solutions To Serious Youth Violence project and worked with journalist Mirren Gidda on several pieces about policing for Liberty Investigates.

  • Knowledge-Exchange Partner

    Drug-related law and harm reduction research and advocacy. Along with my co-author Tom Kemp (criminology, UoN), I collaborated with Release to collect and analyse FOI data on strip-searching from police forces across England and Wales. This research is forthcoming in the journal Theoretical Criminology.

  • Knowledge-Exchange Partner

    Research and campaigning for fair and accountable policing. I have been a member of the StopWatch advisory board since 2022.

    With members of the StopWatch Girls and Young Women’s Research Project based at the National Justice Museum, I co-organised a sold-out public discussion event at Nottingham’s 5 Leaves Bookshop around the launch of Abolishing the Police.

  • Knowledge-Exchange Partner

    Feminist political party, UK. At the invitation of party leader Mandu Reid, I enjoyed chairing a panel on problems with policing at the 2023 WEP conference.

    I am currently advising the party on a Prevention Bill to tackle gendered and sexual violence.

  • Centre Co-Director with Joseph Kisolo-Ssonko

    The NCSP is a hub for critical, engaged philosophical research into the nature of social phenomena. Our aim is to link together scholars, practitioners, activists, and others from across and outside of the University to reshape how we understand the social world – all the better to change it.

    Find out more about the Centre’s members and activities on their UoN site.

  • Interdisciplinary Research Network

    Founded by Elian Weizman and Federica Rossi (Social Sciences and Law, LSBU) in 2021, we are a growing international network of scholars analysing the processes, strategies and tools of formal and informal criminalisation of political activism/dissent in multiple countries, that are self-defining as ‘liberal democracies’.

    Our activities so far include several workshops, a co-authored ‘intervention’ piece in Critical Studies on Security, and panels at European International Studies Association (EISA) and International Studies Association (ISA) conferences. We are working on a collective book project aimed at a popular audience, with the working title Resisting Criminalisation: Tactics of Repression, Tactics of Struggle. See ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS and IN PROGRESS for more on these.

  • Co-author

    Tom is a Research Fellow in law and criminology, focusing on problems with immigration detention and international prison regulation. My collaborations with Tom include researching police strip-searching practices, writing popular articles on abolitionism, and several creative projects. Find out more about Tom’s work here.

  • Co-author

    Katharine’s research is primarily in social philosophy and feminism, exploring questions about how social categories such as races and genders exist, and how these categories are bound up with systematic injustices. Our collaborations have included writing a popular article together about how more policing is not the solution to gendered violence. Find out more about Katharine’s work here.

  • Co-author

    Chris’s research focuses on the arms trade, policing, and resistance. Our collaborations include the Abolishing the Police collection, helping to build the Resisting Criminalisation Research Network, and writing together about radical practices of love and intimacy. Find out more about Chris’s work here.

  • Collaborator

    Madeleine is a multi-disciplinary artist and activist. Her work focuses on the environment, justice, feminism, race, joy, post-capitalist futures and the human experience of facing the age of collapse.

    I worked with Madeleine in developing the dance theatre piece Police Vehicle, a surreal and uncanny investigation of copaganda drawing on the art and artifice of filming for television. Find out more about Madeleine’s practice here.

  • Collaborator

    Damien is currently an environment correspondent for The Guardian, covering climate action worldwide.

    We have worked together to break several stories about my case against the London Metropolitan Police. We have also collaborated in developing workshops for journalists on best practice when covering policing and protest.

  • Legal Team

    I have worked with lawyers at/through Bindmans since 2013 on cases against the London Metropolitan Police. Our achievements together include several successful judicial reviews of the police’s flawed internal investigations, settlement of two civil claims, and a widely-publicised apology from the Met in 2021. A re-investigation by the IOPC based on our complaints is ongoing.

    Solicitors and barristers I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years include Joseph Morgan (Bindmans), Debaleena Dasgupta (Centre for Women’s Justice), Jesse Nicholls (Matrix Chambers), and Benjamin Newton KC (Doughty Street Chambers) and Una Morris (Garden Court Chambers).

Koshka in a tree with Dara Bascara and another friend. Dara's dog Comrade looks up at the tree.
Madeleine Shann, theatre maker
Koshka wearing UCU armband with Sarah Fine (KCL Philosophy) at International Women's Day strike rally in Russell Square, 2018. Placard reads: Solidarity with Yarls Wood Hunger Strike.

Get in touch if you'd like to collaborate

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Get in touch if you'd like to collaborate 〰️