Clive Emsley

In 2000 he was awarded a D.Litt. by the Open University for his published work in the history of crime and policing. He was director of the European Centre for the Study of Policing, and co-director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research.

He was visiting professor at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-St.Denis) (1983–1984) and at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada (1988 and 1990). He was elected president of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice in 1995 and continued in the post. From October to November 2003 he was visiting professor at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and from September to December 2004, visiting research fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian University, Canberra.

He maintained a research interest in the revolutionary and Napoleonic era, but from the early 1980s onwards, his work focused primarily on the history of crime and policing. He co-directed the Old Bailey Proceedings Online project.

He joined the Open University in 1970 as a lecturer, but was later a visiting fellow at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, where he advised on distance teaching (1983) and co-authored a teaching module (1996) which now forms part of a taught MA both at Griffith and the Open University.

After his first degree at the University of York, where he was one of the initial intake of 150 undergraduates, he did research at Peterhouse, Cambridge, into the maintenance of public order in England during the French Revolution. At this point he had to make a career decision, having been a prominent member of the National Youth Theatre as an actor during his time at university. He played the part of Enobarbus (cf Rob Wilton's Theatricalia programme) in a celebrated production of 'Anthony and Cleopatra', with Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, and as a result was offered professional roles. However, he decided to stay in academia and refused the chance to become an actor though he kept his association with the National Youth Theatre during summer stints as an associate director, including 'Julius Caesar' which played in Germany in 1968.

Clive Emsley (4 August 1944 – 5 October 2020) was a British historian and criminologist. He was a research director and lecturer at the Open University.