News

19 December 2025

Professor Paolo Campana's work on organised crime informs the UN 2025 World Drug Report

A framework for characterising the nature of organised crime groups, developed by Paolo Campana, Professor of Criminology and Director of the Violence Research Centre, and his long-term collaborator Federico Varese, has been widely referenced by the 2025 World Drug Report, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.Click here to read more.

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28 November 2025

PhD student's award-winning research explores risk management behind organised drug trafficking

Shujing Shi, a PhD student at the Violence Research Centre, received the First Place of Graduate Student Paper Award by the Division of International Criminology, American Society of Criminology, for a chapter in her thesis supervised by Prof Paolo Campana.Click here to read more.

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30 November 2023

JDLCC's special issue: Longitudinal and Developmental Investigations of Criminal Justice Interventions and Reintegration

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course CriminologySpecial Issue: Longitudinal and Developmental Investigations of Criminal Justice Interventions and ReintegrationIn life-course criminology, great effort has been devoted to understanding within-individual developments in criminal behavior over time, explaining why this development takes place, and…

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15 September 2023

The London Medieval Murder Map project gets an exciting update

Article updated on 28 September 2023In 2018 the London Medieval Murder Map was launched at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, to unexpected international acclaim. Professor Matthew Gabriele compared it to Games of Thrones in a review on Forbes website and web visitors shot up to 63,443 in 2018 and 68,268 in 2019, an unprecedente…

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9 April 2022

Inaugural PhD event and VRC team update

Team update: Simone Castello (second from right) is leaving the VRC on 10 April 2022. She will continue working with Prof Eisner and Prof Jolliffe (visitor of the IoC, University of Greenwich) on the Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology as Managing Editor. Simone wishes to thank everyone - staff, students, academics and affiliated r…

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30 March 2022

Meet the researcher - Dr Andrea Giovannetti

Dr Andrea Giovannetti joined the VRC in mid March 2022 but has been collaborating remotely since 2020. He is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow and works with Dr Paolo Campana on the project “Modelling the dynamics of Violent Gang-Crime: a Network approach”, financed by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation of the EU Commiss…

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9 March 2022

Step into spring with VRC authors

The Michaelmas and Lent terms have been very productive for researchers associated with the VRC. New publications are coming out alongside the spring's daffodils. These cover a variety of topics from theoretical contributions in the field of criminology to longitudinal studies tackling women's and children's mental health and wellbeing.Book launch …

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2 February 2022

Prof Eisner convenes the IoC’s workshop to celebrate 60 years of CSDD

On Friday 21 January 2022, the Institute of Criminology (IoC) hosted a workshop to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development (CSDD). The workshop brought together selected new research based on this unique study. It started with an introduction by Prof Manuel Eisner, Institutional Host of the study. Prof David Farri…

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27 January 2022

New EBLS’ offshoot bridges CFR and VRC

Laura Katus, Research Associate at the Centre for Family Research (CFR), Sara Valdebenito, Research Associate at the VRC and Claire Hughes, Deputy Director of the CFR and member of the EBLS Consortium have recently received a financial grant from the Cambridge Reproduction SRI’s Incubator Fund for a project entitled “Mother knows best: exploring ne…

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6 January 2022

Winter reads: publications from VRC and affiliates

The Michaelmas term has been very productive. As we enter the Lent term, here is a selection of the latest contributions by the VRC and its affiliated researchers. All publications are open access and free to read for everyone.Teen dating violenceEisner, Manuel (2021). The gender symmetry problem in physical teen dating violence: A commentary and s…

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17 December 2021

Meet the researcher – Dr Cecilia Meneghini

The VRC carries out interdisciplinary research on the causes, prevention and consequences of interpersonal violence in national and international societies. In the third of a series of profiles of VRC researchers, we introduce our new Research Associate, Dr Cecilia Meneghini - who works with Dr Paolo Campana - an expert in criminal activities, migr…

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24 November 2021

PhD student Laura Campo Tena contributes to WHO report on ageism

Earlier this year, our PhD student, Laura Campo Tena, contributed to a World Health Organization (WHO)'s international report on ageism. The Global Report on Ageism “outlines a framework for action to reduce ageism including specific recommendations for different actors (e.g. government, UN agencies, civil society organizations, private sector). It…

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17 November 2021

Autumnal picks: our latest published papers

The Michaelmas term is in full swing at the University of Cambridge and the VRC has a fresh batch of papers in publication - most are open access so free to read for everyone.Authority figures and social support in childhood and adolescenceNivette, A., Obsuth, I., Ribeaud, D., Eisner, M. Fair Teachers, Fair Police? Assessing the Pathways between Pe…

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29 October 2021

Criminology Day 2021

On Friday 8 October, the Institute of Criminology (IoC) hosted its annual Criminology Day, bringing to a close the new students' Induction Week. Posters from the IoC's research centres were displayed in the lecture rooms with socially distanced measures in place.Members of the VRC attended the event (from left to right: Maria Ttofi, Manuel Eisner, …

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20 October 2021

Where are they now? Our former PhD students

The Violence Research Centre has been operating for over five years. You can view a short video here, created for our fifth birthday. This is an update on some of our former PhD students, who are inspiring the next generation of students.Our former PhD studentsSupervisors: Dr Maria Ttofi and Prof David FarringtonDr Guy Skinner got his PhD amendment…

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