The DCGC consortium
The Doctorate in Cultural and Global Criminology is staffed with academics who have conducted high quality, extensively-cited, world-renowned research. All four partners in the consortium are nationally and internationally recognised centres of research excellence. The School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research in the University of Kent underwent an objective evaluation in two official, exhaustive UK research assessment exercises and ranked as one of the top four research centres in its field in the UK. It is a member of one of the UK social science Doctoral Training Centres established on a competitive basis by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest has an established national and international reputation and is ranked fifth in central and eastern Europe. Professor Miklós Lévay in the Faculty of Law is the President of the European Society of Criminology. The University of Hamburg has a high academic reputation and its Institut für Kriminologische Sozialforschung offers the only full time English-taught Master in International Criminology in Germany. Utrecht is one of Europe’s leading research universities ranked first in the Netherlands, eleventh in Europe and fiftieth in the world in the Shanghai Ranking. The Willem Pompe Institute at Utrecht offers the only MA in Global Criminology.
Each of the partners has strong academic and research expertise in criminology, with specialist interests which complement one another, particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective. Kent and Hamburg are based in the social sciences, while Utrecht and Budapest are based in law schools. Each partner has long experience in doctoral training and supervision of a wide diversity of candidate research.
At Kent (and its partner, CUNY), Professor Jock Young is one of the most renowned criminologists in the world, famous for his pathbreaking work on critical criminology, criminological realism and cultural criminology. Professors Fritz Sack and Sebastian Scheerer at Hamburg are highly influential in the field of critical criminology in Europe and the USA. ELTE’s Professor Miklos Lévay is not only President of the European Society of Criminology but serves as a judge in Hungary’s constitutional court. At Utrecht, Professors Frank Bovenkerk and Dina Siegel are the leading cultural criminologists on the European continent.
The four partners provide the full range of shared and complementary expertise (theoretical, methodological and policy oriented) relevant to the four research themes (see link). Kent and Utrecht are world leaders in cultural criminology. Kent, Utrecht and Hamburg have innovated in visual criminological research as well as new cultural methods. Globalisation is a theme across all four centres, whether in crime, control and social exclusion (ELTE and Kent), or the drug trade and its cultures (Kent, Utrecht, Hamburg), or the links between the local and the global in youth crime, culture and control (Kent, Hamburg, Utrecht), or the trade-offs between security measures and human rights (Hamburg, ELTE), or in environmental damage and the associated blurred boundaries between crime and social harm (Utrecht), or in the relationship between migration, social and legal exclusion. In each one of these fields, critical perspectives entail the relevance of research to policy makers, civil society actors and criminal justice agents.
Each centre has translated key areas of research into social practice, such as in training of lawyers, judges and probation officers (Utrecht, ELTE), policy evaluation research (Kent, Hamburg), Romany rights (ELTE), constitutional issues (ELTE), contact with youth justice services (Kent), migration services (Kent, Hamburg), research with NGOs (Utrecht).
The four partners represent a diversity of academic and research background which provide a complementary combination of the expertise of the two main disciplinary backgrounds for criminology, the varied cultures of European criminology and two different kinds of legal jurisdiction, common law and civil law.
Their geographic diversity furnishes considerable advantage. The UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Hungary providing opportunities for both a West and an East European perspective. The diversity within the consortium means that candidates will have a choice of legal and policy cultures and different national as well as disciplinary viewpoints. They will benefit from social contacts and networking with a significant number of doctoral candidates in each location who are undertaking a wide range of research in social science and law-based criminology.
