Policing Academic Centre of Excellence

The University of Portsmouth Policing Academic Centre of Excellence (UoP P-ACE) is a UKRI funded Centre in partnership with the National Police Chief’s Council for a period of three years from 1 October 2025. The UoP P-ACE is focused upon enhancing its academic-policing partnerships through knowledge mobilisation, undertaking and embedding pioneering research and driving ongoing research capacity and the development of police science literacy. The UoP P-ACE will create and consolidate evidence that directly addresses the strategic needs of policing, advance collaborative engagement with stakeholders by summarising and making accessible new and existing research evidence, and build research capacity and focus on the long-term educational development of policing professionals. 

The UoP P-ACE programme of work will be co-produced by academics and policing practitioners and include policing futures forums, competitive programmes of research funding, digital platforms for knowledge sharing, research support hubs, educational training programmes, summer schools and public events.

Areas of Research Interest covered

• Building and maintaining public trust
• Crime prevention
• Identification and Tracing
• Surveillance and Sensing

Policing Areas of Research Interest

List of specialisms

Diversity and representation; Trust, rapport and confidence; Cybercrime; Cybersecurity; Social engineering (e.g. phishing); Internet of Things crime prevention; Economic crime (including fraud, corruption, money laundering, intellectual property crime and economic espionage); Missing persons; Extremism and radicalisation; Crime prevention; Vulnerabilities, safeguarding and victim support/rights; Violence against women and girls and online gender-based violence; Wildlife crime; Policing cultures; Police workforce; Biometrics; Facial recognition and eyewitness identification; Forensic accounting; Forensic science (including digital, archaeological, anthropological, entomological); Crime scene investigations; Human/system interactions; Forensic and Investigative interviewing; Intelligence gathering; Information elicitation; 3D imaging; Remote sensing; Artificial Intelligence (AI); Machine learning (ML); Ethics in AI/ML; Crime prediction tools.

Governance

The UoP P-ACE is governed by two Directors and a Centre Manager who will provide the intellectual leadership, strategic direction and financial oversight of the UoP P-ACE. Together with our project partners, we will monitor the impact, value and effectiveness of the workstreams (see below) overseen by an appointed Steering Group of academic experts and  policing representatives.   

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