DR James Backhouse

RESEARCH GRANTS
 

Current

§                Next Generation Anti-Terrorist Financing Methods (GATE) funding from PASR (Preparatory Action for Security Research) EC Programme. 24 months (LSE element 12 months) Other Participants: Exodus plc, Greece; Piraeus Bank, Greece; Italian Regulator UIC; Joint Research Centre (EC) of Italy; a UK Bank. Income: Approx 1.5 million euros, 350k euros to LSE. Activities: Develops work from the LSE-led Spotlight Project, especially in the Anti Terrorist Financing area and for SMEs. Proposal scored 23.5 from a possible 25 evaluation points.  GATE was one of only 6 projects selected for funding from a total of 165 proposals submitted.  Began January 2007.
 

§                FIDIS (Future of Identity in the Information Society) EU 6th Framework, Start Apr 04 - End Mar 09 Income: 437,000 pounds to LSE Activities: EU Framework 6 project drawing together 24 institutions from across Europe and across different disciplines - technology, law, law enforcement, education, sociology, AI, privacy, philosophy etc examining important issues of identity management in Europe.  Am founding member who co-drafted the original proposal, member of the Joint Activities Board, leader of Work Packages 4 and 9, and designated editor of the planned Journal of Identity in Information Society (Springer International) whose creation was written into the original objectives.  Outcomes: EU research reports (see above).  Policy advisor roles to Foresight projects.  Arranged internal seminars for Department of Constitutional Affairs, Information Research Department. Chapter in edited book (Hildebrandt).  Networking with cross-disciplinary community. PhD funding (Baptista, Demetis). Post Doc Research officer post (Halperin).

 

Past research grants

§                Spotlight EU AGIS Fund with commercial contribution, Start Sep 04 - End Jun 05. A project in the area of anti-money laundering (AML) funded by the EU AGIS programme.  AGIS is a framework programme to help police, the judiciary and professionals from the EU member states and candidate countries co-operate in criminal matters and in the fight against crime.  The consortium LSE put together included the Financial Intelligence Unit of Italy and Ireland: the Ufficio Italiano dei Cambi and the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority, as well as the UK National Criminal Investigation Service, UK Asset Recovery Agency, a UK global bank and a second sizeable UK bank. Income: 105,975 pounds Activities: Development of modelling methods for behavioural profiling with 2 UK banks providing data, with input from Italian regulators and UK Law Enforcement Agencies. Outcome: Methods and frameworks for performing behavioural profiling within financial institutions in AML and Anti Terrorist Financing (www.spotlight.uk.com). Articles in Journal of Money Laundering Control, Journal of Financial Crime and the Financial Regulator (Backhouse, Angell, Demetis). Contribution to Profiling Work Package 7 of FIDIS (Backhouse and Canhoto). Book chapter in forthcoming "Profiling the European Citizen" (Springer). PhD funding (Canhoto, Demetis).  High level international seminars held in 6 European capitals. Laid down groundwork for the GATE project (see below).

 

§                InTrust Industry funding. Income: 5000 pounds, Start October 2004 - End March 2005.  Activities: This small study researched trust perceptions of employees in the intranet at Alliance and Leicester (AL). Focus groups, Employee Survey (1000 respondents), Interviews. Outcome:  Report and presentation. Conference papers (Academy of Management 2006; ICIS 2006 Web Technologies Track) and Journal papers (Information Systems Research, submitted July 2006)

 

§                Fiducia - Modelling Risks in Public Key Infrastructure Interoperation, Start Dec-00 - End May-02, Joint ESRC and DTIproject,  ESRC ref. L142251004 Income: 172,000 pounds.  Activities: The project was part of a DTI/ESRC Management of Information LINK programme on Fraud, Security and Privacy.  It researched interoperability of Public Key Infrastructure by modelling policies adopted by Certification Authorities for identification and authentication of digital certificate subjects.  Partners were De La Rue International, BT Exact Technologies, HR Wallingford, inMezzo.  Outcome: The outcome was a method for modelling interoperability risks when accepting extra-domain certificates which takes the analyst through the steps of selecting the certificate policy, performing the semantic analysis, developing the ontology and norms that constitute the reference model, and assessing the certification procedures against the reference model for commonalities and variances.  A legal expert in the field found the method "a more complete and lower cost solution to the problems of interoperability compared with the "traditional" route of asking a lawyer to work their way through a series of documents and arrive at conclusions via a combination of textual analysis and knowledge of the practices of international law".  A database of 103 Certification Authorities with respective Certificate Policies and Practice Statements was developed.  A PhD student, Carol Hsu, was supported through part of his doctoral studies.  Publications and conference papers emerged: ICEC 2001, ECIS 2003, CACM 2004, and this work led to LSE partnership in the 5 year FIDIS project and leadership of its Interoperability of Identity research.

 

§                Project Arrow- Consumer Protection and Online Finance, Start Sept-00 - End Nov-00, Financial Services Authority, Income: 35,000 pounds. Activities: The Computer Security Research Centre and Enterprise LSE cooperated with the FSA in September-November 2000, preparing a report on the issue of consumer protection and online finance.  Outcome: The report Consumer protection in the online finance environment Nov 2000 informed regulation for online banking in the UK.  The FSA's own report was published in summer 2001.  The work part-funded 2 PhD students (Wamala and Fawzi).

 

§                COMELY - Control of Money Laundering in the Electronic Years, Start Jan 00 - End Jul-01, partners were the Ufficio Italiano dei Cambi - Italy's Financial Intelligence Unit - and UBS Bank, Income: 30,000 pounds. Activities: researched the AML reporting and monitoring practices inside the Italian regulator. Outcome: Internal report and continued partnership with UIC in two subsequent projects (Spotlight and Gate). Funding for PhD student (Wamala)

 

§                Distance learning research grants- various projects April 1997 - September 2001 PRIVATE

  • March 00- September 01 HEFCE, Income: 192,000 pounds. Activities: Piloting the use of technology in the delivery of a number of online courses at LSE - a bid with the then Learning and Teaching Technology Group. A number of courses were developed, supported and researched. Outcome: Streamlining of the development of online courses.  This project built on the experience of earlier projects by the Computer Security Research Centre into the use of ICT for online and distance learning:
  • Jan 00 - Dec-00, HEFCE, 15,000 pounds. These grants led to the first LSE online taught course using WebCT in Lent Term 2000, Report entitled OnLine Learning at the LSE September 2000 - a seminal report on LSE's development of online learning.  This report set out the learning and experiences of the first online supported course at LSE and paved the way for what is now the LSE's TLC.  It also helped to fund a PhD in online learning (Hsu).
  • Jan 98 - Dec 98, HEFCE, 27,000 pounds. First Distance Tutorial Experiments
  • Jan 99 - Dec 99, HEFCE, 50,000 pounds. Experiments in Virtual Seminars
     

§                Audit worries in payment control, Jan-99 - Dec-99, Deutsche Bank, Income: 25,000 pounds.  Activities: Began a partnership with Deutsche Bank's operational control staff, Outcome: leading to joint report DB/CSRC-LSE on internal control issues in DB and to funding for the Centre, and a PhD (Willison)
 

§                Systems audits and interpretation variance, Jan-00 - Dec-00, Deutsche Bank Income: 25,000 pounds led to funding for PhD (Chauvidul) completed 2001
 

§§                Trustees Savings Bank Initial funding for Computer Security Research Centre Income: 10K pounds Activities: funded development of security colloquia. Outcome: First LSE Web Site 1995