Dr Vicky Conway joined the School of Law and Governance in DCU in July 2015, having previously held positions at the University of Kent, Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Limerick and the University of Leeds. Vicky is a graduate of UCC (BCL 2001, LLM 2002), the University of Edinburgh (MSSc Criminology 2003) and Queen’s University Belfast (PhD 2008, PGCert Higher Education 2010). Vicky is currently Chair of the BCL Programme and a committed socio-legal scholar who believes that academic research should be innovative and challenge and aim to directly inform legislative and policy developments. Vicky is a leading researcher on policing in Ireland with an emphasis on the intersection between social change, police culture and police accountability. She has conducted innovative qualitative research in this area, funded by the British Academy, which has resulted in two monographs on policing in Ireland (The Thick Blue Wall: The Morris Tribunal and Police Accountability in the Republic of Ireland and Policing Twentieth Century Ireland: A History of an Garda Síochána). Her expertise in this area has been recognised through Vicky’s appointment by the Government in December 2015 to the newly created Policing Authority which is tasked with oversight of an Garda Síochána, Ireland’s police service. Along with colleagues Dr Yvonne Daly (Law and Government) and Dr Yvonne Crotty (Institute of Education) she is currently part of an EU Commission funded grant called SUPRALAT (http://www.salduzlawyer.eu/) which is developing training for criminal defence solicitors to enable them to best defend their client’s rights in the garda station. This training, being developed across 4 member states, has been accredited by the Law Society of Ireland and will address a substantive lacuna following changes in Irish policy and EU law. Vicky teaches across a range of modules related to criminal justice and the operation of the legal system in Ireland. She currently supervises a doctoral student who is studying the protection of minority language rights. She has held visiting scholar positions in North America, Australia and Ireland. Vicky deploys a critical, socio-legal approach to research to all her teaching and supervision. In addition to her current role on the Policing Authority, Vicky is a member of the board of the Association of Criminal Justice Research and Development and has previously been a board member of the award winning Committee on the Administration of Justice in Northern Ireland. Dr Conway is also the author of ‘Policing Twentieth Century Ireland A History of An Garda Síochána’ 2014 published by Routledge.