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Dr Christopher Williams

Senior Lecturer

History

chris.williams@open.ac.uk

Biography

I'm a Senior Lecturer in History. I have an MA in Urban History from the University of Leicester, and a PhD from the University of Sheffield, with the thesis topic 'Police and Crime in Sheffield, 1818-1873'.

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Social History Society.

Publications

Book

Police Control Systems in Britain, 1775–1975: From Parish Constable to National Computer (2014)

Police and Policing in the Twentieth Century (2011)

History and Crime (2008)

History and Crime (2007)

Giving the past a future: preserving the heritage of the UK's Criminal Justice System (2004)

Book Chapter

Counting and Experiencing Crime in the Twentieth Century (2023)

Risk on the Roads: Police, Motor Traffic and the Management of Space, c. 1900–50 (2016)

Robert Owen. Reputations and burning issues (2011)

Labelling and tracking the criminal in mid-nineteenth century England and Wales: The relationship between governmental and creating official numbers (2010)

Policing the Populace: The road to professionalisation (2010)

Rotten boroughs: the crisis of urban policing and the decline of municipal independence 1914–64 (2007)

Beware of the Leopard? Police archives in Great Britain (2006)

Police and the Law (2006)

The Sheffield Democrats' critique of criminal justice in the 1850s (2004)

Expediency, authority and duplicity: reforming Sheffield’s police 1832-1840 (2000)

Journal Article

Making manifestos for urban history: creative collaboration in a conference workshop (2024)

Police governance – community, policing, and justice in the modern UK (2011)

Police filming English streets in 1935: the limits of mediated identification (2009)

Ideologies, structures and contingencies: writing the history of British criminal justice since 1975 (2008)

Constables for hire: the history of private 'public' policing in the UK (2008)

'Home and Away': The Cross-Fertilisation between 'Colonial' and 'British' Policing, 1921-85 (2007)

Britain’s police forces: forever removed from democratic control? (2003)

Police surveillance and the emergence of CCTV in the 1960s (2003)

Catégorisation et stigmatisation policières á Sheffield au milieu du XIXe siècle [Numbering crimes and measuring space: policing Sheffield in the mid-nineteenth century] (2003)

Counting crimes or counting people: some implications of mid-nineteenth century British police returns (2000)

Presentation / Conference

The role of trade unions in promoting wellbeing (2021)