Boston College Law School Professor Robert Bloom has been named a recipient of the Trinity College Dublin Long Room Hub Fellowship, a distinguished recognition from Ireland’s oldest and most prestigious law school.
“As I enter the twilight of my academic career, this is a tremendous honor,” said Bloom, who has been teaching law at Boston College for 40 years. “It’s very exciting and an opportunity to meet scholars from varying disciplines from around the world.”
Bloom was granted the highly sought-after fellowship after submitting a proposal to study the An Garda Síochána (“the Guardian of the Peace”), the police force of Ireland. In recent years, the Garda has been criticized for corruption and lack of accountability, and Bloom hopes to work with Garda and Irish government officials to investigate these accusations.
“I spent much of my career teaching about police and their relationship with citizens as governed by our constitution,” says Bloom. “I want to look at the Garda and take what I learned about police in the United States and compare the two.
“I’m going to be looking at the structure and hierarchy of the Garda, including individual and collective identities, patrol officers as well as supervisory officers, to better formulate policies that will lead to better citizen oversight of the police.”
Bloom will spend part of the 2016 spring semester in Dublin as part of Trinity’s Fellowship Programme, which, according to the institute’s website, brings leading international scholars to work on “major, career-changing research projects, work with the unique collections of our world-class library...and engage intensely with colleagues from cognate areas within the university on collaborative research.” Bloom will present lectures and participate in research seminars there.
Bloom last visited Ireland during a 2010 sabbatical as a visiting scholar at University College Dublin and is looking forward to his return.
“I find the people are just so warm and so accepting,” says Bloom. “One of the joys of my academic career is having had the opportunity to meet people from around the world. Although when I go to a new country, I’m partly a tourist, I also enjoy living and working there. That’s the best way to learn about a culture and society.”
Bloom hopes what he learns about the Irish police force can promote healthy debate and analysis, leading to “a constructive contribution to the Garda and a national conversation.”