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Biography
Clifford Shearing is a Professor Emeritus at the Universities of Toronto and Cape Town and holds professorial appointments at the Universities of Griffith (adjunct), Montreal (associé), and New South Wales (visiting professorial fellow). He is an Associate in the African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town.
His research has focused on the governance of safety and security, with a particular focus on the role of public and private authorities and providers.
Shearing has, throughout his career, sought to reshape understandings of policing. He, with his collaborators, has coined terms such as “mass private property”, the “governance of security” and “nodal governance” that have become common parlance within the criminological lexicon. His analyses have been influential in developing "policing studies" as an area of inquiry beyond "police studies”.
His current work is focused on reshaping the boundaries of criminological studies in ways that enable criminologists to engage with the shifts in the risk landscapes that are characterising the 21st Century. His most recent work is focused on understanding shifting harmscapes in the 21st Century and responses to them by security professionals. His most recent books are Security in the Anthropocene: Reflections on Safety and Care (with Cameron Harrington, 2017), Criminology and the Anthropocene (with Cameron Holley 2017), and Criminology and Climate: Insurance and the Regulation of Harmscapes ``(edited with Cameron Holley and Liam Phelan In the Series “Criminology at the Edge”, Eds. Leclerc, B., Homel, R. and Shearing, C.). Routledge, 2020.
Shearing has been actively engaged in enhancing the safety of people lives through a variety of policy and other practical engagements across the globe — for example, in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. He co-authored the influential 1999 Patten Commission report on policing in Northern Ireland and a landmark 2014 report by the Council of Canadian Academies, commissioned by the Government of Canada, entitled Policing Canada in the 21st Century: New Policing for New Challenges. This report builds on early coauthored reports published by the Canadian Law Reform Commission on global developments in policing.
At a practice level, Shearing is currently engaged, with the support of the Mauerberger Foundation, in assisting young South Africans who are making a difference in transforming human engagements with earth systems through EESI (Environmental Entrepreneurs Support Initiative) to significantly extend their contributions.
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435-2018-0615