Prof Martin Gill has accepted the newly created position of Research Council Chair from the US-based ASIS International Foundation.
Early initiatives of Professor Gill and the council will focus on establishing a research agenda to proactively direct independent research on "what works" in the industry.
"It is absolutely essential that in the future the security world recognizes that research has to be higher up on the agenda," said Prof Gill. "The Research Council will help this process, by developing research findings that are meaningful, and can feed into a more sophisticated education and training programme.”
The establishment of the Research Council and the appointment of Professor Gill, from the University of Leicester, as Chair are two of the first initiatives in a series of broad changes in organisational structure adopted by the ASIS International Foundation Board of Trustees during its annual meeting in January 2005. The goal, says ASIS, is a more strategic approach by returning the Foundation to its original mission of identifying and producing security research.
The Research Council was established to oversee the projects the Foundation undertakes in studying and expanding the security industries body of knowledge. Prof Gill has been involved in security and crime-related research for more than 15 years. notably into retail theft and what makes thieves tick – by interviewing hundreds of offenders in UK prison. He is the editor of Security Journal, a peer-reviewed journal of security research.
