Take 5 with...Dr. Anastasia Dukova
(Editor note: The original post date for this discussion is 10 August 2020)
Take 5 with...Dr. Anastasia Dukova (Queensland Police Museum)
1. What's your favorite course to teach?
When I was actively teaching, I enjoyed teaching History of Terrorism the most. It covered a significant time period beginning with Herod’s reign of Judea in the 3 century BCE and extending until the present. The course engaged with the history of the act and the word, as well as the crime, which in itself is a relatively novel concept constructed in the 1970.
2. What's your current research project?
I am currently working across several fronts, including putting together a compendium of the Queensland policemen that volunteered in the Australian Imperial Force, 1914-1918. Presently, it is not known how many Queensland policemen went to fight in the First World War. I am also at the early research stages of the project, a history of women in the Queensland Police, which aims to collect, collate and utilise interviews of retired police officers to capture lived experiences of police women within the organisation. The project will afford a unique perspective on how police and social cultures of the State intersected facilitating better understanding of the department during the global and social crises such as world wars, the corruption scandal of the 1980s and its eventual restructure in 1991.
3. What's your favorite place to do research?
In 2019, I completed a research fellowship with the State Library of Queensland and had the opportunity and pleasure of working at the Neil Roberts Research Lounge. It is a beautiful research space with expansive views of the Brisbane River. In addition to the lounge being a wonderful area filled with natural light, it affords an easy access to the primary resources held at the John Oxley Library.
Generally, I would have to say the Reading Room at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin, is my favourite place to do research. Sadly, given the current travel restrictions it will be a long while before I will be in the position to visit the space again.
4. What's the most important book shaping your thinking in the field?
Clive Emsley’s Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900 led me down the path of historical criminology and policing history. As an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, I found his approach to writing history of crime and society engrossing, comprehensive and yet approachable. Whenever I was stumped writing my first monograph on the history of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, I would always ask myself ‘what would Clive Emsley do?’ and revisit his works for inspiration.
5. If you weren't where you are now, how might you use your PhD?
Earlier this year, in 2020, I pivoted my academic career into museum and heritage sector. Following completion of my PhD at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, in 2012, my academic work moved along an all-too-familiar trajectory of (largely successful) grants applications, short-term research fellowships and precarious sessional instruction. By mid-2019, it was becoming apparent that unless I was prepared to relocate, chances of securing an on-going academic appointment were non-existent. I am now working at the Queensland Police Museum, QPS, as the resident police historian and a museum assistant. I continue researching in my area of expertise and publishing. As I continue progressing in this sector, I look forward to recreating and relating history in three dimensions using objects, in addition to words.
Scholar Bio: Anastasia Dukova is a resident historian and a museum assistant at the Queensland Police Museum, Queensland Police Service. She holds a PhD in crime and policing history from the University of Dublin, Trinity College. She is a member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians and the Professional Historians Association (Queensland). Her research on nineteenth-century Irish and Australian policing history and historical criminology has been published widely, and her doctoral and postdoctoral findings were published in 2016 as A History of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and its Colonial Legacy in Palgrave Macmillan’s World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence series. Anastasia’s most recent book, To Preserve and Protect: Policing Colonial Brisbane, has just been published by UQP. She has held fellowships with the State Library of Queensland, Harry Gentle Resource Centre and Griffith Criminology Institute, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto and a postgraduate scholarship with the Irish Research Council. Anastasia is a partner investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project that investigates the policing of migrant communities in Britain and Australia throughout the twentieth century (DP180102200). She also lends her historical crime and policing expertise to public and professional lectures, as well as popular history projects such as Century Ireland, RTÉ and Who Do You Think You Are?
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