Clifford Shearing is a Professor Emeritus at the Universities of Toronto and Cape Town and holds professorial appointments at the Universities of Griffith (adjunct), Montreal (associé), and New South Wales (visiting professorial fellow). He is an Associate in the African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town.
Shearing’s academic work has broadened criminology’s boundaries, with a primary focus on ‘security governance’ and how this might be understood and enhanced. In the context of his applied work he has co-authored the 1999 Patten Commission report on policing in Northern Ireland and, a 2014 report by the Council of Canadian Academies, commissioned by the Government of Canada, entitled Policing Canada in the 21st Century: New Policing for New Challenges. This report builds on earlier reports published by the Canadian Law Reform Commission on global developments in policing.
His current work is focused on exploring shifts in 21st Century risk landscapes. Recent books include Security in the Anthropocene (Transcript, with Cameron Harrington), 2017; Criminology and the Anthropocene (Routledge, edited with Cameron Holley), 2018, and Criminology and Climate: Insurance and the Regulation of Harmscapes (Routledge, edited with Cameron Holley and Liam Phelan), 2020.
He has authored 20 books and over 200 papers and has throughout his career, sought to reshape understandings of security and its governance. He, and his collaborators, have coined terms such as “mass private property”, the “governance of security” and “nodal governance” that have become common parlance within the criminological lexicon.
Shearing is currently engaged, with the support of the Mauerberger Foundation, in supporting young people who are making a difference in transforming human engagements with earth systems through EESI (Environmental Entrepreneurs Support Initiative) he also supports the Evolving Securities Initiative, a network that brings together security scholars and professionals undertaking innovative research and thinking on today’s security challenges.
Clifford Shearing 