Before starting at Middlesex University as a Lecturer in Criminology in 2019, Paul was a doctoral student and casual academic at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. Paul completed his PhD thesis The Punchline of ‘the Joke’: The Impact of Process Corruption in the Queensland Police Force, 1957-1989 in June 2019. Based on several years of archival research, this thesis explored the effect of process corruption (both noble cause and mercenary) on divergent subpopulations from the LGBTQI+ community to the student protest movement. Before embarking on an academic career, Paul worked for ten years in the Queensland public education system and as a journalist for publications across the UK and Australia. He is an active member of a range of historical criminology research networks including the British Society of Criminology’s HCNet, the North American Historical Criminology Network (NAHCN) and the Australian and New Zealand Historical Criminology Network (ANZHCN).
Paul comes from a background as a trained teacher, spending much of the last decade teaching in a secondary school environment. He has a Graduate Diploma in Education from Griffith University on the Gold Coast, Australia. He is a committed advocate of designing a curriculum that appeals to different learning styles, and encourages direct student participation in the learning process as much as possible.
When it comes to teaching at a university-level, Paul has previously taught in a diverse range of areas from Deviance to Sexuality in the 21st Century. Prior to joining Middlesex University, Paul focused primarily on core first-year subjects like Introduction to Sociology and Foundations of Sociology. Now, Paul leads the second-year Urban Criminology module, where is able to explore issues from LGBTQI+ community formation to controversial policing methods. Paul also co-leads Crime and Control in Social Context, a core first-year subject focusing on better understanding criminological concepts in practice. Finally, he has been co-teaching on Global Criminology and Policing, a master’s module where he is largely responsible for instructing students on major issues in transnational policing.
Urban criminology, historical criminology, corruption, policing, organisational criminology.
Bleakley, Paul (2020) Muddy Waters: Critiquing the Historical Criminology Method in the Investigation of the Smiley Face Murders Theory. Homicide Studies . ISSN 1088-7679 (Published online first)
Bleakley, Paul (2020) 'No action required': a historical pattern of inaction and discretion towards child sexual abuse in Queensland policing. The Police Journal: Theory, Practice, Principles , 93 (2). pp. 109-130. ISSN 0032-258X
Bleakley, Paul (2020) The trouble with squads: accounting for corruption in Australia’s specialist policing units. Criminal Justice Studies . ISSN 1478-601X (Published online first)
Bleakley, Paul (2020) The cult of corruption: reframing police corruption from a cultic perspective. Deviant Behavior . ISSN 0163-9625 (Published online first)
Bleakley, Paul (2019) Fish in a barrel: police targeting of Brisbane’s ephemeral gay spaces in the pre-decriminalization era. Journal of Homosexuality . ISSN 0091-8369 (Published online first)
