News

30 October 2019

Innovative research by Dr Amy Nivette (Utrecht University), Prof Eisner (VRC, Criminology, University of Cambridge) and Dr Denis Ribeaud (Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich) sheds new light on the development of legal attitudes in adolescence. The open-access paper - entitled Evaluating the shared and unique predic…

25 October 2019

On Friday 11 October, the Institute of Criminology opened its doors to prospective students and researchers to showcase its wide range of research projects. The VRC, alongside other research centres, contributed with posters and speakers. Students and visitors were treated to lectures, poster displays and a communal lunch. Our posters featured an o…

3 October 2019

The Violence Research Centre (VRC) was five years old in 2019. It was officially launched during the Global Violence Reduction Conference on 18 September 2014. This international event was organised by the University of Cambridge and the World Health Organization. The Conference was filmed and photographed - you can see the photos and the programme…

7 August 2019

The UNODC’s (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) Global Study on Homicide 2019 was published online in July 2019, updating the 2014 edition. It aims to improve understanding of this complex issue and providing policymakers with a dataset of cross-national data to inform their decisions.The Study is divided in six booklets, comprising a summar…

10 July 2019

Nynke Niezink, assistant professor at the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA), is visiting the Violence Research Centre (VRC) for two weeks.She is working with Dr Paolo Campana on a project on what drives organised crime-related violence, using a network perspective to study the emergence of vio…

4 July 2019

Prof Manuel Eisner attended the 1st INSPIRE Implementation Jamboree - Advancing evidence-based action to end violence against children - in Kampala, Uganda, on 24-25 June 2019, where he presented the Evidence for Better Lives (EBLS) study to an international audience. EBLS is an innovative global birth-cohort study in eight cities across the world.…

23 May 2019

Dr Justice Tankebe has published a paper entitled Cooperation with the Police Against Corruption: Exploring the Roles of Legitimacy, Deterrence and Collective Action Theories in The British Journal of Criminology.Corruption is a global problem. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) identified it as a key issue in organised crime and …

3 May 2019

A recent study carried out by researchers at the VU University in Amsterdam, Utrecht University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Zurich suggests that healthy bonds with parents support the development of self-control in mid- and late adolescence. Lacking self-control, in turn, was found to predict involvement in delinquent activit…

26 April 2019

The Real Gold Standard: Measuring Counterfactual Worlds That Matter Most to Policy. What research evidence do we need to inform policy about what works? Are experiments the ‘Gold Standard’ for establishing causal effects that matter for important policy goals in education, welfare, prevention and policing? Programme outlineWelcome and Introduction…

17 April 2019

Professor Maria Fernanda Peres from the Department of Preventive Medicine, University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil, is visiting the VRC this month. She is the Principal Investigator, alongside Professor Manuel Eisner, of The São Paulo Project on the Social Development of Children (sp-proso).This project uses the methodology of the Zurich P…

13 March 2019

The VRC and its affiliated international researchers published several papers in the first months of 2019. Here is a selection on different topics. Child victimisationChildhood Predictors of Violent Victimization at Age 17 Years: The Role of Early Social Behavioral Tendencies by Margit Averdijk, Denis Ribeaud and Manuel Eisner in The Journal of Ped…

28 February 2019

Dr Jonathan Lusthaus - Director of The Human Cybercriminal Project in the Department of Sociology and a Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford - presented the research behind his latest book, Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime to an audience of academics, students, IT professionals and the general public. Lu…

20 February 2019

The VRC, who is going to be five years old in September, has issued its latest activity report, covering two academic years, 2016-17 and 2017-8. This follows the previous report, covering the academic year 2015-16. Both reports are available for download on this page (click here).Our director, Prof Manuel Eisner, writes in the 2016-18 report: “The …

1 February 2019

Cybercrime: an invisible threatOn 27 February, the VRC is hosting Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime, a talk by Dr Jonathan Lusthaus, director of the Human Cybercriminal Project at the University of Oxford. It is based on the homonymous book, published by Harvard University Press in October 2018. Industry of Anonymity is an ex…

11 January 2019

We have started 2019 with great enthusiasm, buoyed by our website’s analytics report. In 2018 our website was visited by 63,443 people, a 679% increase from 2017. Our London Medieval Murder Map has caught the attention of both the general public and the academic world. We have received interesting emails and achieved international media coverage. W…