Policing History explores historical interactions between police and the policed across cities of Ireland, England, Australia and Canada.

Dr Anastasia Dukova is the professional historian behind Policing History. Anastasia holds a PhD in crime and policing history from the University of Dublin, Trinity College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians (IAPH).

Her articles on nineteenth-century Irish and Australian policing history and historical criminology have been published widely, and her doctoral and postdoctoral findings were published in 2016 as A History of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Its Colonial Legacy in Palgrave Macmillan’s World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence series (2016).

She has held fellowships and awards with the State Library of Queensland (2018-19) Q ANZAC 100: Memories for a New Generation, Harry Gentle Resource Centre (2017), Lord Mayor's Helen Taylor Award (2016-17) and Griffith Criminology Institute (2014-15), as well as a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto (2012-13) and a postgraduate scholarship with the Irish Research Council (2008-2011).

Anastasia was a partner investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project that investigates the policing of migrant communities in Britain and Australia throughout the twentieth century. Managing Migrants and Border Control in Britain and Australia, 1901-1981, is lead by an expert team (DP180102200 A Varnava, M Marmo, E Richards & E Smith) based at Flinders University, Adelaide. She also lends her historical crime and policing expertise to public and professional lectures, as well as popular history projects such as Century Ireland, RTÉ and Who Do You Think You Are?

Policing History began as Policing Colonial Brisbane in 2017, funded by Brisbane City Council community grant for local history. The research for project was supported by the expert staff of Queensland Police Museum.

Policing Colonial Brisbane drew together expertise across disciplines and utilises a variety of media available (virtual and print) to maximise the reach, share collated information and raise awareness of local historical collections and Brisbane’s heritage. As the project developed it consolidate a large scope of historical information on aspects of urban life in Brisbane from 1859 to 1901, making it available to members of the public who are interested in local history and in the societal and political issues of that time, and of course policing-related issues.

Policing History draws on the research spanning over a decade, 2008-2019, made possible though the Irish Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences scholarship and the Grace Lawless Lee Fund grants (TCD) conducted during doctoral research in Dublin, Ireland, postdoctoral fellowship with the Celtic Studies Department, St Michael’s College, University of Toronto, and the Lord Mayor's Helen Taylor Research Award for Local History, Brisbane City Council.