Associate Professor Danielle Watson

Editor, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy

Dr Danielle Watson is an Associate Professor and Research Training Coordinator in the School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She is also an Affiliate of the Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI). Her research focuses on Pacific regional security, border security, policing, police/community relations, policing culturally and linguistically diverse communities and plural regulatory systems in the Caribbean and Pacific. She conducts research on (in)security in Pacific Island countries, capacity building for security service providers, recruitment and training as well as many other areas specific to improving security governance in developing country contexts. Her research interests are multidisciplinary in scope as she also conducts research geared towards the advancement of tertiary teaching and learning.

Danielle has contributed significantly to the development of context specific scholarship on security in small island developing states in the Global South. She is the principal researcher on four ongoing projects: “Beyond Imported Understandings of Domestic Violence in the Pacific”, “Reimagining insecurity in Pacific Island States”, “Policing Pacific Island Communities” and “Indigenising Discourses on Access to Justice in the Pacific” and the lead author of Policing in the Pacific Island (2022, Palgrave) and Police and the Policed (2018, Palgrave).

Danielle has won competitive grants and consultancy tenders from international bodies such as the Australian Research Council, the British Academy, Canada-CARICOM awards, Pacific Immigration Development Community and the UNDP. She has also been the recipient of prestigious fellowships, which include recognition as an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA Indigenous), an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Endeavour Executive Fellowship (2016) and a British Academy Fellowship (2018).

As a cross disciplinary researcher working in multiple countries across the globe, she has research collaborators and networks in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, Oceania, and North and South America.