Centre for Criminology at Essex
Our Centre for Criminology is to become a local and international centre of
excellence for the study of criminology, to attract research funding, produce
world class research outputs and to engage with local schools, colleges and
businesses.
We're keen to attract the very best quality postgraduate research students to
our Department and use our criminological research activities as a base for
teaching at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels.
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Criminology at Essex
At
Essex we take the sociological approach to studying crime and deviance to answer
questions such as:
- Why are laws made?
- Why are these laws subsequently broken?
- What can be done about it?
- Why is society fascinated with crime?
One aspect of criminology is to focus on the individual, but here at Essex we
take a much broader perspective and research criminology from the social
perspective.
Since the early 1970s, with the publication of Folk Devils and Moral
Panics by our founding professor, Stan Cohen, we have grown into one of the
largest groupings of researchers in the department.
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Our members
We have seven members of staff actively researching in the fields of:
- crime and the media;
- drug use and markets;
- green criminology and crimes against the environment;
- major events and security;
- organised crime;
- security;
- surveillance; and
- terrorism and counter-terrorism.
We're all criminology teachers but also engaged researchers and as a
consequence our teaching is research based and of the real world.
Members of the criminology team are:
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Our work
Dr Pete Fussey is currently
working on
Resilient Futures 2010-13, a collaborative project funded by the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC) with a number of universities across the UK. It is
investigating the future developments in the UK's energy and transport
infrastructure and the resilience of these systems to natural and malicious
threats and hazards.
Pete is also working on a project called Terrorism and Crowded Places: Shades of
Grey 2010-2013, which is part of 1.2m EPSRC research project. This research
stream covers a number of areas ranging from the
commission
of terrorist acts to the form and impact of counter-terrorism measures.
Professor Dick Hobbs' ESRC-funded project (with Gary Armstrong and Richard
Gullianotti) is looking at the policing of the Olympic Games. He has just
completed a book on organised crime, Lush Life.
In addition, Dr Pam Cox
has developed a new research project with crime historians Barry Godfrey
(Liverpool) and Heather Shore (Leeds Metropolitan University) on the long term
impact
of
19th and 20th century youth justice interventions. The project will use
digitised historical data to establish 'what happened next' to a large cohort of
delinquent, difficult and destitute children passing through England's early
youth justice systems.
Professor Eammon Carrabine has made a bid to the ESRC for a seminar series
on 'Visual Criminology' with City University, Keele and Leicester Universities.
A series of
ESRC seminars on green criminology is running up until July 2014.
Professor
Nigel South has been involved in the successful bid from the ESRC, led by Dr
Tanya Wyatt from Northumbria University, and actively takes part in the
seminars.
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Study criminology
We welcome high-quality
undergraduate,
masters and
research students who want to study
criminology.
As a research student you will work closely with your supervisor/s, all of
whom have excellent reputations for conducting cutting edge research. You will
play a full and active role in the various activities that the Centre is
currently developing.
Members of the centre have excellent contacts with local and central
government agencies and international academic and policy networks, which will
benefit students working with us and allow us to bid for funding. We have
already been successful in attracting funding from the:
- Home Office;
- Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC);
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC); and
- the European Economic Community (EEC).
News and events update
The third in a series of free and open lectures brought to you by the Centre for Criminology provides an opportunity to hear Dr Rachel Colosi (University of Lincoln)
and Dr Tanya Bunsell (St Mary’s University College) talk about their insider accounts of the controversial activities of lap dancing and female body building. The Lecture will take place
in LTB 8 at 5pm.
On the 13 May, Professor David Wilson presented a lecture, What
serial murder tells us about Britain: This was the second of our public
lectures, and again we enjoyed a full-house with standing room only. Professor
Wilson presented serial killing in a carefully nuanced manner presenting this
rare, but highly publicised crime in a distinctly sociological context.
Reading
the riots - reflections on some unusual research: 27
February 2013
Based on an unusual collaboration between a newspaper
(The Guardian) and a university (the LSE) Reading the
Riots sought to investigate the August 2011
disturbances. Focusing in particular on the study's
first phase, Professor Tim Newburn talked about the disorder primarily through the eyes of the rioters
themselves, looking at who was involved, the extent and nature of their
participation, and at their accounts of what prompted or motivated their
actions. The event was attended by well over 100 students, staff, and members of
the public. In particular the event was enhanced by the presence of a contingent
of students and staff from Palmers School, who were fully involved in making
this lecture highly successful.
This was the first in a lecture series that will be a regular feature of the
Criminology Centre.
Broadcast highlights
Fools and Horses, by Professor Dick Hobbs
Writing for the
Oxford
University Press Blog, Dick Hobbs gives his views on the link, or otherwise,
between organised crime and the 
horse
meat scandal.
Thinking Allowed: 6 February 2013
Professor Dick Hobbs joined Laurie Taylor on Radio
4's Thinking Allowed programme to discuss organised
crime in the UK.
Download the podcast.
Organised Crime Workshop
December 2012
The Centre for Criminology is home to a powerful cohort of PhD students
studying aspects of organised crime and in December they were joined by Roxana
Bratu of the London School of Economics to discuss their work before a small
audience of undergraduates and post graduates.
Anna Sergi talked about her work looking at socio-legal aspects of organised
crime in Both Italy and the UK. Tom Davies presented a paper on his research
into the relationship between violence and drugs. Falko Ernst talked about his
fieldwork in Mexico looking at drug trafficking cartels. Roxana Bratu then
presented a paper on her soon to be examined PhD research on corruption and
entrepreneurship in Romania.
Anticipating the 2012 Olympics
May
2012
This event was held at the Highway Church in Romford
Road, Stratford in the heart of the Olympic Borough of
Newham. The event was a jointly organised between the
Essex Criminology Centre and the Cultural Studies
Centre, University of Western Sydney. A wide range of 25
experts from the UK, Australia, Greece and France
gathered for this invitation only occasion to discuss,
the cultural and economic context of the 2012 Olympics,
lessons to be learnt from previous Olympics – notably
Sydney and Athens, event planning, Olympic security, and
Olympic Policing.