Danielle Watson is an Associate Professor and Academic Lead of Research at the School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology. She is also an Affiliate of the Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI).

Her research focuses on Pacific regional security, border security, policing, police/community relations, policing culturally and linguistically diverse communities and plural regulatory systems in the Caribbean and Pacific. She conducts research on (in)security in Pacific Island countries, capacity building for security service providers, recruitment and training as well as many other areas specific to improving security governance in developing country contexts. She has contributed significantly to the development of context-specific scholarship on security in small island developing states in the Global South.

Danielle is the principal researcher on four ongoing projects: “Beyond Imported Understandings of Domestic Violence in the Pacific”, “Reimagining insecurity in Pacific Island States”, “Policing Pacific Island Communities” and “Indigenising Discourses on Access to Justice in the Pacific” and the lead author of Policing in the Pacific Island (2023, Palgrave) and Police and the Policed (2018, Palgrave).