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Welcome

Welcome to the official web-page for the series of workshops on 'A Comparative Analysis of Recent French and British Riots'. The series forms part of the Franco-British Collaborative Workshop Scheme, jointly established by the AHRC, ESRC, CNRS and Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche. The workshops are bringing together French and British academics to discuss the recent riots in the French banlieues and corresponding riots in former textile towns of northern England in mid-2001. The series is allowing participants to exchange relevant ideas and experiences with the aim of enhancing knowledge, informing social policy and instigating future research projects. A regular (core) group of eight British and eight French academics is being joined by specially invited expert guest speakers. These include academic specialists engaged in relevant research in Germany and Holland, police officers with direct experience of the riots, and practitioners responsible for formulating and implementing social policy in the aftermath of the British riots.

The series comprises three workshops, each of two days’ duration. In December 2006, David Waddington and Mike King met up in Paris with Fabien Jobard to put together a tentative schedule. They decided that the inaugural meeting of all participants would take place in Sheffield in mid-February 2007, to be followed by subsequent workshops in Paris in June 2007, and at Birmingham Central University in October 2007. They established that priority would be given at this final workshop to planning and instigating future grant proposals and research collaboration. A final report would be written up and posted on the workshop’s web-site by the end of July 2008.