Esme O’Donnell

Working title of PhD: Policing the Pandemic: Understanding the impacts of Covid-19 on the police, the public, and police-community relationships

Institution: Edinburgh Napier University

Funding Source: Self-funded

Full time or Part-time: Full time

Year Commenced: 2022

PhD Supervisors: Dr Shane Horgan, Dr Andrew Wooff (Edinburgh Napier) & Dr Andy Aydin-Aitchison (Edinburgh University)

Synopsis of PhD:

My thesis explores the role of the police in enforcing public health regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the views and experiences of frontline officers and members of the public. Knowledge is approached here as situated, emplaced, and embodied, meaning that accounts of policing must be understood in relation to the contexts and conditions in which they are produced. This perspective underpins the study’s use of Rita Floyd’s Just Securitisation Theory: while the framework guides the analysis of how people assess the legitimacy of pandemic policing, it is applied in a way that allows the sociomaterial dynamics of those assessments to speak.

To capture these dynamics, the research combines static, walking, and driving interviews, methods that foreground how place and movement shape meaning-making. The study maps how public interpretations of police legitimacy during the pandemic aligned with or diverged from officers’ own understandings of self-legitimacy. It considers how pandemic policing reshaped relationships between the police and the public, while also affecting relationships among officers themselves. Attention is also paid to how experiences varied across different local contexts, highlighting the role of place in shaping sensibilities about policing. Finally, the study reflects on what lessons might be drawn from pandemic policing for future emergency responses, particularly strategies that could sustain legitimacy and strengthen relationships between police and communities.