Monday 11th June saw the formal launch of the online Research4Justice community at the first FIT-IN Research Symposium hosted by The Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences in Birmingham.

“The event was fully booked with a superb mix of delegates. Enthusiastic research discussions could be heard throughout the day between academics, student researchers, forensic and policing practitioners; it is a really exciting time!”

Associate Professor Rachel Bolton-King, one of the Research4Justice founders and project lead, demonstrated the Justice Toolkit, a continuously developing resource for international researchers and practitioners. The founders asked attendees to review the toolkit and provide feedback to ensure relevant and inclusive content for justice-related research across all relevant disciplines. As a growing community, we also asked for users to inform us of any existing, changing or emerging resources for inclusion in the multi-disciplinary toolkit.

Delegates were updated with the development of the Research4Justice research database, which is being developed by Jisc and will be launched online later in 2018. Due to the launch of the Research4Justice online community, future database users can now access a wealth of information about the repository, how to prepare content and answers to Frequently Asked Questions, for example.

An online space for FIT-IN was also demonstrated, with details for how users can contact FIT-IN and provide them with valuable feedback for the network’s future development. Please see the live Twitter feed from the event using #FIT_INetwork to see an overview of the topics presented and the range of police-academia research that is already underway.

“We urge our current community to help us spread the word about Research4Justice through their professional connections, using social media (@Res4Just), websites, blogs and verbal communication.”

Dr Rachel Bolton-King, Staffordshire University

To secure the future of the community from August 2019 Research4Justice are seeking sponsorship from organisations who will benefit from the toolkit, repository and provision of online networking.

We therefore have 12 months to extensively grow our international community, demonstrate impact and prove the value of this resource to ensure the content remains free to all individual users.

The feeling from delegates after the event was really positive. There seemed to be some real motivation and forward-thinking actions resulting from the discussions initiated during this event. We would like to thank all the event organisers, presenters and delegates for making this event so memorable and creating a valuable opportunity for us all to share latest developments in research across academia and industry.