Arabian Travellers, 1800–1950: An Analytical Bibliography

Western travelogue writing has long been a crucial source of information for scholars of the Arabian Peninsula, but nonetheless, this body of literature has not yet been studied comprehensively and systematically by a modern scholar. This article addresses that deficiency by collecting data on the nationality, routes travelled and intertextual citations of 91 authors active in Arabia from 1800 to 1950. The results of this study provide quantitative verification for several existing theories on Western travel writing in Arabia, including Edward Said’s claim that ‘Orientalism’ was predominantly an Anglo-French project, and observations by Said, James Canton and others that European travellers had intimate ties with European imperialism. At the same time, this study challenges some existing arguments about Western travel writing in Arabia, especially claims by Alaine Hutson and others about the inherent unreliability of this corpus of sources.     

China’s economic statecraft in Europe

Asia Europe Journal - China’s economic statecraft in Europe relies upon three distinct strategies: specific and diffuse reciprocity, and strategic engagement—each designed to advance a...     

Teaching Law Students How to Feel: Using Negotiations Training to Increase Emotional Intelligence

This article suggests that negotiation courses using traditional lectures combined with role plays and simulated exercises can be used to train students in understanding emotion and increasing their emotional intelligence. The article defines emotion and emotional intelligence; describes and analyzes one simulated exercise that has proven to be particularly potent in the classroom for teaching both the theory and practice of emotional intelligence; sets forth the rudimentary components of a possible curriculum for emotions training; and concludes with reasons why law schools and other professional degree-granting programs can and should make training in emotions a curriculum staple.     

‘Ulster’s policing goes global’: The police reform process in Northern Ireland and the creation of a global brand

This paper engages with contemporary discussions in relation to the commodification of policing and security. It suggests that the existing literature regarding these trends has been geared primarily towards commercial security providers and has failed to address the processes by which public policing models are commodified and marketed both within, and through, the transnational policing community. Drawing upon evidence from the police change process in Northern Ireland, we argue that a Northern Irish Policing Model (NIPM) has emerged in the aftermath of the Independent Commission on Policing (ICP) reforms. This is increasingly branded and promoted on the global stage. Furthermore, we suggest that the NIPM is not monolithic, but segmented, and targeted towards a number of different ‘consumers’ both domestically and transnationally. Reflecting these diverse markets, the NIPM draws upon two seemingly incongruous constituent elements: the ‘best practice’ lessons of policing transition, as embodied in the ICP reforms; and, the legacy of counter-terrorism expertise drawn from the preceding decades of conflict. The discussion concludes by querying as to which of these components of the NIPM is in the ascendancy.     

Survey of 1276 shoeprint impressions and development of an automatic shoeprint pattern matching facility.

1276 shoeprints were collected at a scientific exhibition. Details regarding the age groups of the participants, style, size and manufacturer/brand of their shoes were recorded. The impressions were assigned to pattern groups showing that the most common pattern was present in only 1% of the population studied and most patterns were much less common. The impressions were digitized and a system developed for automatically sorting a database of images of outsole patterns in response to a reference image. The database images are ranked so that those from the same pattern group as the reference shoeprint are likely to be at the start of the list. A database of 486 complete shoeprint images belonging to 142 pattern groups was established with each group containing two or more examples. Tests of the system have shown that the first-ranked database image belongs to the same pattern group as the reference image 60% of the time and that a correct match appears within the first 5% of the ranked images 88% of the time. The system has translational and rotational invariance so that the spatial positioning of the reference shoeprint images does not have to correspond with the spatial positioning of the shoeprint images of the database. The performance of the system for matching partial shoeprints was also determined.     

Can you use community policing for counter terrorism? Evidence from NSW,Australia

A contested question in the international policing literature is whether it is possible to undertake effective anti-terrorism community policing. The NSW Police Force’s Counter Radicalisation Strategy involved a community engagement initiative that used community liaison officers, mostly working with Sydney Muslim communities. This study reviews the success of this initiative, drawing on data from a survey of Sydney Muslims. The community engagement initiative was found to have direct contact with the community, it was public, and it involved aspects of partnership and relations of depth. For these reasons, the initiative was within the community policing paradigm. There was strong community awareness of the programme, and a majority saw it as successful. There remained pockets of community suspicion and critique, which require attention. The respondents recommended an enhancement of the community policing aspects: more (and wider) contact, visibility and partnership. The findings affirm the utility of community policing for counter-terror work.