Vicky Conway

DR

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Dr Vicky Conway passed away in the summer of 2022, she is deeply missed by her friends and colleagues in DCU. She 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). She was made Associate Professor of Law in 2017 and was the School's first Convenor of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
Vicky was a committed socio-legal scholar who believed that academic research should be innovative and challenge and aim to directly inform legislative and policy developments. She was a leading researcher on policing in Ireland with an emphasis on the intersection between social change, police culture and police accountability.  Her expertise in this area has been recognised in a number of Government appointments. She served twice as a member of the Policing Authority, and served on the Commission on the Future of Policing (May 2017- Sept 2018)
Along with colleagues Dr Yvonne Daly (Law and Government) and Dr Yvonne Crotty (Institute of Education) she was part of an EU Commission funded grant called SUPRALAT (http://www.salduzlawyer.eu/) which developed training for criminal defence solicitors to enable them to best defend their client's rights in the garda station. Now accredited by the Law Society of Ireland, Dr Daly continues to deliver this training.

In 2020 she started an innovative podcast called Policed in Ireland (@policedpodcast) which created a space to hear the lived experience of being policed in Ireland.

Vicky taught across a range of modules related to criminal law, criminology and policing. She held visiting scholar positions in North America, Australia and Ireland. 

Vicky regularly contributed to media discussions on policing and criminal justice. 

Book

Year Publication
2013 Vicky Conway (2013) Policing Twentieth Century Ireland: A History of an Garda Síochána. Oxon: Routledge.
2010 Vicky Conway, Yvonne Daly, Jennifer Schweppe (2010) Irish Criminal Justice: Theory, Process and Procedure. Dublin: Clarus Press.
2010 Vicky Conway (2010) The Blue Wall of Silence: The Morris Tribunal and Police Accountability in the Republic of Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.

Book Chapter

Year Publication
2016 Vicky Conway (2016) 'The Kerry Babies Case' In: Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments. London : Hart.
2015 Vicky Conway (2015) 'Human Rights and Policing in Ireland' In: International Human Rights: Perspectives from Ireland. Dublin : Bloomsbury.
2015 Vicky Conway (2015) 'All that Glitters is Not Gold: An Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission' In: Defining events Power, resistance and identity in twenty-first-century Ireland. Manchester : Manchester University Press.
2019 vicky conway (2019) 'The Politics of Police Accountability' In: The Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics. Oxford : Oxford University Press.

Peer Reviewed Journal

Year Publication
2012 Vicky Conway, Jennifer Schweppe (2012) 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Miscarriages of Justice in Ireland'. Dublin University Law Journal, .
2011 Dermot Walsh, Vicky Conway (2011) 'Police Governance and Accountability: An Overview of Current Issues’'. Crime, Law and Social Change, .
2011 Vicky Conway, Dermot Walsh (2011) 'Recent Developments in Police Governance and Accountability in Ireland'. Crime, Law and Social Change, .
2009 Vicky Conway (2009) 'A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing? Evaluating the Impact of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission'. Irish Jurist, .
2009 Vicky Conway, Michael Mulqueen (2009) 'The 2009 Anti-Gangland Package: Ireland’s New Security Blanket?'. Irish Criminal Law Journal, .
2008 Vicky Conway (2008) 'Lost in Translation: Ireland and the Patten Report'. Northern Irish Legal Quarterly, .
2021 Daly, Y.;Conway, V. (2021) 'Selecting a lawyer: the practical arrangement of police station legal assistance'. Journal of Law and Society, . [Link] [DOI]
2020 Pivaty A.;Vanderhallen M.;Daly Y.;Conway V. (2020) 'Contemporary criminal defence practice: importance of active involvement at the investigative stage and related training requirements'. International Journal of the Legal Profession, 27 (1):25-44. [Link] [DOI]
2019 Conway, V (2019) 'Near or far away: Local police governance in Ireland'. European Journal of Criminology, 16 :515-533. [DOI]
2019 Vicky Conway and Yvonne Daly (2019) 'From Legal Advice to Legal Assistance: Recognising the Changing Role of the Solicitor in the Garda Station'. .

Other Journal

Year Publication
2015 Mairead Enright, Fiona DeLondras, Vicky Conway (2015) 'Abortion Law in Ireland: A Model for Change' .
2012 Vicky Conway, Brian Payne (2012) 'A Framework for a Restorative Society? Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland' .
2005 Vicky Conway (2005) 'An Garda Síochána Act 2005 – Breaking Down the Thick Blue Wall?' .
2004 Vicky Conway (2004) 'Garda Síochána: Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission' .
2003 Vicky Conway (2003) 'Lock ‘Em Up and Throw Away the Key: A Review of the Irish Prison System' .
Certain data included herein are derived from the © Web of Science (2022) of Clarivate. All rights reserved.

Employment

Employer Position From / To
University of Kent Senior Lecturer in Law -
Queen's University of Belfast Lecturer in Law -
University of Limerick Junior Lecturer in law -
University of Leeds Teaching Fellow -

Education

Start date Institution Qualification Subject
University College Cork BCL
Queen's University Belfast PhD
University College Cork LLM

Research Interests

The central focus of Dr Conway's research to date involved a critical analysis of policing in Ireland, the first of its kind to draw on legal, sociological and criminological theories. Applying a diverse range of methods from legislative and case-law analyses, oral history interviews with retired police, and documentary and discourse analyses, she produced a critical assessment of the development of policing in a post-colonial, post-conflict society. Combined with empirical data part-funded by the British Academy, this work (Policing Twentieth Century Ireland) was published by Routledge in June 2013 to excellent reviews. In Theoretical Criminology 19(3)(2015) Mulcahy described it as “a most welcome—and much needed—addition to the literature on policing in Ireland.”  
A second aspect of her work investigated the governance and accountability of public police. She co-organised (with Dermot Walsh) an international conference on police governance which attracted participants from Europe, America and Australia. The papers were disseminated through a double special edition of the leading American journal, Crime Law and Social Change and have been widely accessed and cited. This work was critical to her contribution to the Policing Authority, evidence that she was recognised to be Ireland’s expert on police governance and accountability.  
A third area of research concerned criminal procedure which builds on previous publications concerning miscarriages of justice, and a textbook Irish Criminal Justice: Theory Process and Procedure. She was part of a European Commission funded project (€580,000) which developed and delivered training for lawyers on attending interviews in police stations. This project was in partnerships with colleagues in Belgium, Hungary and the University of Maastricht. With Prof Yvonne Daly, she wrote a book on Criminal Defence Representation in Garda Stations with Bloomsbury.   
Finally she was actively engaged in research on Ireland’s abortion law. She was commissioned by Labour Women to draft legislation which could operate post-repeal of the 8th amendment to the Constitution, she was invited by numerous NGOs and political parties to advise them on the key issues. This work has involved collaboration with a large number of academic and practitioner colleagues. 

Contract Researchers

Researcher Name Project Funding Body
Sarah Pryor SUPRALAT - EU Commission

Modules Coordinated

Term Title Subject
2023 LG130