International Ambassadors
The British Society of Criminology has appointed a number of International Ambassadors whose role is to help us to maintain close links with the international criminological community, and promulgate the work of the BSC and its members overseas. They assist in fostering relationships with other organisations and can be a first port of call for those visiting, studying in, moving to, or conducting research in their locale.
If you make contact with an International Ambassador, please let them know you found their details here.
Sandra Lee Browning
Associate Professor, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, USA.
Personal message: It is a great honor and privilege to be an International Ambassador for the BSC. A word or two about me. I am an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. I am an American Sociological Association and an American Society of Criminology Minority Fellow. I am also an active member in the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Southern Sociological Society. Throughout the various organizations, I’ve severed on several committees most notably as chairperson of the Affirmative Action Committee for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and a committee member for the Society for the Study of Social Problems, C. Wright Mills Award. At the University of Cincinnati, I’m an affiliate in the Department of Women’s Studies as well as a union representative for the American Association of University Professors – University of Cincinnati Chapter. I’ve published on the impact of race on attitudes toward crime and justice, as well as the impact of incarceration on marriage and the family. My current research interests are in the areas of crime and the underclass, the institutionalization of black males, and the role of race in shaping views of the criminal justice system. For the School of Criminal Justice, I teach a variety of different courses including, Law and Social Control, Race, Class and Crime, Women and Crime, and a Teaching Practicum course where I prepare our doctoral students for the joys and challenges of teaching. I’m looking forward to serving the BSC.
Email: Sandra.Browning@UC.edu
Recent activities: Recently, I’ve been investigating the causes and cost of the high recidivism rate in the US.
Carlos Alberto Carcach
Professor & Coordinator, The Center for Public Policy, Escuela Superior de Economía y Negocios, El Salvador
Personal message
I am honored at being an international Ambassador for the BSC. Since 2003, I have been a Professor of Statistics and Econometrics at the Escuela Superior of Economia y Negocios, El Salvador, where I also coordinate the activities of The Center for Public Policy. Previous to returning back to El Salvador, I was a researcher and team leader at the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra. I specialize in the use of quantitative methods in the fields of criminology, economics and social sciences. My publications cover the areas of homicide, suicide, gangs, fear of crime, victimization and Bayesian spatio-temporal modeling of crime. I am a member of the Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis (ECCA) group, American Society of Criminology, American Statistical Association (graduate statistician), The Royal Statistical Society (fellow), and the Econometric Society. I look forward to becoming a point of contact for BSC members with an interest in Central America.
Email: ccarcach@esen.edu.sv
Recent activities: I have been doing research on both the spatial and temporal evolution of violent crimes in El Salvador with a focus on homicide, extortion, disappearances and suicide, all related to gang activities. I use methods originally developed for the Bayesian mapping of diseases and mathematical models for biological processes. Currently, I am conducting research on the geographical expansion of gangs in El Salvador through the clustering of the temporal trajectories of crime rates among the municipalities of El Salvador. I am also investigating the processes of social and economic expansion of gangs.
Vania Ceccato
Department of Urban Planning and Built Environment, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden.
Personal message: I am interested in how different spaces relate to people’s daily interactions, some leading to crime. My current research activity is in the area of space-time dynamics of crime and people’s routine activity and includes projects in transit safety, housing and community safety, rural crime, gendered and intersectionality in safety issues. I have published in international journals, mostly in Criminology, Geography and Urban Planning and I am the author of Rural crime and community safety (2015, Routledge), Moving Safely, Crime and perceived safety in Stockholm’s subways stations (2013) and the editor of The urban fabric of crime and fear (2012) and co-editor of Safety and Security in Transit Environments: An Interdisciplinary Approach (2015, Palgrave) with Andrew Newton. I was born in the Brazilian countryside and migrated to Sweden in mid 1990s, where I was awarded my PhD and later, my docentship. I treasure five years of my life I spent in the UK as post-doc candidate. My family lives in both sides of the Atlantic, Sweden and Brazil. I’m delighted to be representing the BSC through the role of International Ambassador and if I can help you in this capacity please contact me.
Email: vania.ceccato@abe.kth.se
Recent Activities: I gave two lectures in Brazil in July 2017, one about Women’s victimisation and safety in transit environments (see abstract below) and one about Spatial statistics and crime analysis. Both lectures were at Sao Paulo State university (Unesp), 4th and 6th July 2017.
Women’s victimisation and safety in transit environments
My presentation reports lessons learned from articles of a double special issue entitled ”Women’s victimisation and safety in transit environments” coming out this summer in the journal Crime Prevention and Community Safety. Although the special issue is composed of eight articles reflecting experiences from many countries, my presentation will focus on the types of safety challenges faced by women in countries of Global South, in particular from examples from Brazil and India. The main reason is that in these countries, a large percentage of women are “transit captives”, namely, they have relatively less access to non-public forms of transportation and are therefore overly reliant on public transport. If public transportation is not safe, or at least, perceived to be, mobility is impaired. Finally, I briefly discuss the most urgent research questions as well as some of the policy recommendations that arise from this international and multi-disciplinary take on women’s victimisation and safety in transit environments.
2015 – Panel discussion on Crosstalks on the Global Decline of Crime: Global crime is declining but have we created a safer world?
Eric Chui
Professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, China.
Personal message: I was appointed as Professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences since August 2014. Previously, I taught social work, criminology and law at the University of Exeter (UK), University of Queensland (Australia), The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong. My primary fields of research are in youth justice social work and Asian criminology broadly defined. To be more specific, my current research interest lies in two areas, namely young people in conflict with the law and Chinese criminal justice. I am known regionally and internationally as a youth justice and social work researcher. In recent years, I have successfully tested and extended the application of western theories of delinquency (including social bonds theory, self-control theory) to the Chinese context; and this research has challenged traditional understandings and false assumptions about various aspects of criminal justice in Hong Kong. Two of my recent publications are: Responding to Youth Crime in Hong Kong: Penal Elitism, Legitimacy and Citizenship (2014) and Understanding Criminal Justice in Hong Kong (2nd ed., 2016). I was the managing editor and book review editor of the Asian Journal of Criminology, and I serve on the editorial board of a number of academic journals including the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (SSCI), Australian Social Work (SSCI), Child & Family Social Work (SSCI), Social and Public Policy Review, International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, and Journal of Practice Teaching in Health and Social Work. Last but not least, I am interested in exploring possible research collaboration with prospective doctoral students and criminal justice researchers around the world!
Email: eric.chui@cityu.edu.hk
Recent activities: Study on Youth Violence and its Intervention, Social Welfare Development Fund, Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups. Enhancement of Service for Elderly Ex-offenders, Social Welfare Development Fund, The Society for Community Organization.
Lucia Dammert
Associate Professor, Department of Humanities, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile.
Personal message: It is a great honor to be an International Ambassador for the British Society of Criminology. I am an Associate Professor of International Studies at the University of Santiago de Chile and have studied thoroughly the security issues that occur in Latin America. I am currently the only Latin American on the Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters of the Secretary General of the United Nations and am also a Global Fellow of the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.
In the past 10 years I have worked with national and local governments, research organizations and international cooperation agencies such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the Interamerican Development Bank in topics of urban violence in Latin America. At the public policy level I have held key advisory positions in the governments of Argentina, Peru, Chile and Mexico as well as in the Organization of American States.
Among my most recent books you can find Fear and Crime in Latin America. Redefying State-Society Relations (2012, Routledge), co edited, and Maras: Gang violence and security in Central America (2011, University of Texas Press) with Thomas Bruneau. Furthermore, I have been working on the phenomenon of fear of crime and police reform issues where my most recent publications are ‘Fear of crime in Latin America’ (2018) with Felipe Salazar, in The Routledge International Handbook on Fear of Crime, Murrey, L. & G. Mythen (339-353), and also ‘Police reform in Latin America?’ (forthcoming), in the Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America, Sieder, R. K. Ansolabehre.
I am delighted to be an International Ambassador for the BSC. I would be happy to help build a bridge with Latin American researchers working on criminological issues.
Email: lucia.dammert@usach.cl
Recent activities: I am working on two research projects: (i) Punitive populism and media coverage in Chile and (ii) Fear of crime and policing issues in Peru. Recently I was invited to Guatemala and Ecuador to debate issues of crime prevention and police reform. In May 2018 I will be participating at the Latin American Studies Association Conference in Barcelona on a panel on Corruption and Organized Crime.
Diego Gorgal
Professor at the School of Government of Torcuato Di Tella University (Argentina), School of Politics and Government of Austral University (Argentina), and the Joint Institute of Strategic Management at the Argentinean Ministry of Security.
Personal message: I am delighted to be an International Ambassador for the BSC. My entire career has been devoted to bridging the theoretical field and the real world at the crime policies arena. As a practitioner, in the wake of the 2001 Argentina´s crisis, I served in several governmental positions at the decision making level, such as Secretary of Security of the City of Buenos Aires, or Under-secretary of Security Planning of the Province of Buenos Aires, among others. Certainly, those years allowed me to gain first-hand experience regarding how crime policies are made under critical conditions such as technical and financial constraints, social conflict, and political pressure. After ten years of public service, I turned to the academic field, which I combine with consultancy on security projects for public and private organizations. Currently, I am professor at the School of Government of Torcuato Di Tella University (Argentine), School of Politics and Government of Austral University (Argentine), and the Joint Institute of Strategic Management at the Argentinean Ministry of Security.
Email: dgorgal@yahoo.com
Recent activities: My last work was “La sostenibilidad de las reformas policiales en América Latina” (Sustainability of police reforms in Latin America), and it was recently published in a book edited by Mariano Tenca y Emiliano Mendez Ortiz, with forewords of David Garland, “Manual de Prevención del Delito y Seguridad Ciudadana” (Manual of Crime Prevention and Citizen Security), Ciudad de Buenos Aires: Ediciones Didot 2018. Based on the case of one of the largest police agency in Latin America—the Province of Buenos Aires’ Police, which in the last twenty years was reformed twice, and the reforms were repealed twice—I discuss a model to assess under which conditions a police reform increases the chances of being sustained.
Richard M. Hough
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and Public Administration Program Coordinator, Department of Administration and Law, University of West Florida.
Personal message: What a tremendous honor and opportunity to serve as an International Ambassador for the British Society of Criminology. The iterations of the Society over the past century and the contemporary contributions of its conferences and publications speak to the continued vibrancy of criminology in the U.K. and the Society’s influence globally. I have already made it common practice to speak of the developments that take place within the BSC and writings of the members. The importance of sharing the insights and knowledge of the BSC with our colleagues internationally is of great importance.
My background as both a practitioner with diverse experience in the U.S. criminal justice system, and researcher and teacher of university students, and trainer of law enforcement and corrections personnel, have given me an opportunity over four decades to critically assess and track trends and advances – as well as missteps – in America. Since my days at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, I have consciously included an international focus in my own work and in my facilitation of learning for others. I frequently conduct criminology and criminal justice topic briefings for public service professionals from around the world as part of the U. S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Presentations with U.K. colleagues at the last two annual BSC conferences were wonderful experiences and welcoming several members to the Homicide Research Working Group (HRWG) annual conferences. I am pleased to have recently joined the efforts of the Criminal Investigation Research Network (CIRN) based at the University of South Wales.
Email: rhough@uwf.edu
Recent activities: The two areas of interest that occupy much of my time are the study of criminal homicide and its investigation, and the use of force within the field of criminal justice. The former lead to co-authoring the text American Homicide with Dr. Kimberly McCorkle and published by SAGE, and the latter interest lead me to write the recently published text The Use of Force in Criminal Justice, published by Routledge. I consult to numerous criminal justice agencies and often testify in the U.S. federal court system as an expert on the use of force, as well as police and corrections practices. I teach courses on policing, homicide, cold case investigations, the use of force, and public management.
I’m happy to help represent BSC in the United States and around the world and I look forward to some great conversations and collaborations.
Karuppannan Jaishankar
Professor of Criminology, Raksha Shakti University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India and President, South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology (SASCV), India.
Personal message: Though I have many interests in the field of Criminology, I am presently contributing more to the fields of Cyber Criminology and Victimology. I am the Founder of the academic discipline ‘Cyber Criminology’ (founded 2007) and Perspective ‘Cyber Victimology (created 2015). In 2013, I won the prestigious “National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) – SCOPUS Young Scientist Award 2012 – Social Sciences” in a stiff competition. The Key notes given by the panellists in support of my award were: ‘Pioneering and collaborative research work, Clarity and grasp on the subject work domain and high awareness of related contemporary issues.’ My first direct interaction with the members of BSC was in 2009, while I was a Commonwealth Fellow at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds. Also, as the founding President of the South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology (SASCV) (founded 2009 www.sascv.org), I had the privilege to interact with many of the members of the BSC and their response and support to SASCV was very impressive. In addition, as the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of two international open access journals i.e., International Journal of Cyber Criminology (founded 2007 www.cybercrimejournal.com) and International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences (founded 2006 www.ijcjs.com), I always received great support from BSC members as either members of the Editorial Advisory Board or peer reviewers. I deem it a great honour to be an International Ambassador of BSC. As an International Ambassador of BSC, I sincerely believe to enhance my collaborations with British Academia and will try to take the BSC’s principles to my international networks. To know more about me and my works, please visit http://www.jaishankar.org
Email: profjai16@gmail.com
Recent activities: Invited Expert Speaker at ‘Cybercrime: The Hidden World – International Workshop’, November 13-14, 2017, in Singapore, by the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
Visited the Department of Criminology, Southampton Solent University, Department of Criminology, University of Southampton, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, and Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, University College, London, United Kingdom during 4-10 September 2017 for forging international collaborations.
Completed a Consultancy Project titled “Trained Criminologists: Academia-Police Partnership” Ahmedabad City Police, Gujarat, India
Gorazd Meško
Professor of Criminology and Head of the Institute of Criminal Justice and Security, at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Slovenia.
Personal message: I have been teaching criminology since 1992, which I believe is a great privilege. My study visits to universities in the UK have always been a great experience. I was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge in 1995, 2001 and 2010-2014, and at the Centre for Criminology in Oxford in 1996 and 1999 which helped me to improve my criminological knowledge and ability to do comparative criminological research. I also enjoyed the status of Honorary visiting fellow at the Department of Criminology, University of Leicester (2005-2008). One of the most important student exchange projects I have been involved in was a project between EU and Australia (2006-2009) headed by Susanne Karstedt (Keele University, now Griffith University) and Richard Wortley (Griffith University, now UCL). In addition to teaching in Slovenia, have enjoyed working with the Erasmus+ exchange students and mentored several diligent masters and doctoral students in English in the last decade. I have recently co-edited ‘Handbook on Policing in Central and Eastern Europe’ (Springer, 2013) and ‘Trust and Legitimacy in Criminal Justice: European Perspectives’ (Springer, 2015). I have also been a guest editor of Policing – An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management (2009), the Prison Journal (2011) and Crime, Law and Social Change (2013). Besides, I have recently participated in European research projects on local safety and security (EEMUS and URBIS) and juvenile delinquency (YOUPREV). All these projects have been an excellent opportunity to learn about research practices in other academic and professional cultures. I’m delighted to be representing the BSC through the role of International Ambassador, and if I can help you in this capacity, please contact me.
Email: gorazd.mesko@fvv.uni-mb.si
Recent activities: A visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge, UK (2010-2014) – a partner in studies on situational action theory (PADS+) (a joint paper in the European journal of criminology together with Helmut Hirtenlehner in 2019) and legitimacy of criminal justice (a book with R. Hacin on legitimacy in prisons, SpringerBriefs, 2020). My current research activities are related to safety/security in local communities, especially in rural settings. I am currently co-editing books on victims and victim protection in the Balkans (Max Planck Institute, planned for publishing in 2020) and Water, Governance and Water Crime (Springer, scheduled for publishing in 2020). I have been the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Criminal Investigation and Criminology (orig. Revija za kriminalistiko in kriminologijo) since 2010. The journal is listed in the SSCI (criminology & penology) and Scopus. Last but not least, I have been a chairperson of an international biennial conference on criminal justice and security organised by my faculty in Ljubljana, Slovenia (https://www.fvv.um.si/conf2020/about.html) since 2004. The conferences have helped many regional scholars to publish their papers in English and make their research visible to international criminological, criminal justice and security researchers, policymakers and practitioners. Topics covered since 2004 include: development of criminology; criminal justice and security studies; policing; contemporary social control; unconventional deviance, research in criminology and criminal justice; professionalism, trust and legitimacy; safety, security in local communities; and evidence-based policy making.
Bronwyn Naylor
Graduate School of Business & Law RMIT University, Australia.
Personal message: I am delighted to be an International Ambassador for the BSC. I am a Professor in the Graduate School of Business & Law RMIT University and was formerly in the Law Faculty at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia. For a number of years I was an Associate Chair of the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee. I grew up in Melbourne and practiced law briefly before working in a statutory law reform agency, and then becoming an academic. I have degrees in Arts (English Literature) and Law from Monash University, and a PhD in Criminology from Cambridge University. I first began attending BSC conferences in the 1980s when I studied for the MPhil in Criminology at Cambridge, and continued when I returned in 1992 for doctoral studies. I have always found such interdisciplinary and comparative engagement invaluable in my research, which in recent years has incorporated criminal law, human rights laws, and regulatory theory in analyses of imprisonment and sentencing, prison overcrowding, crime and gender, and transitions from prison. Some of my current projects include examining how human rights principles can be implemented in places of detention such as prisons; whether and how children of offenders can be taken into account in sentencing and imprisonment decisions; the consequences of a criminal record for ex-offenders; legal and policy approaches to banning the corporal punishment of children; defences for female homicide offenders; and restorative justice avenues for victims of sexual violence. I look forward to continued interaction with BSC members in these and other projects.
Email: bronwyn.naylor@rmit.edu.au
Recent activities: Publication of a co-edited book Human Rights in Closed Environments (Federation Press 2014), and co-authored Criminal Law text (2016). Co-ordination of an international seminar in Stockholm on the corporal punishment of children, papers to be published in 2018. Organisation of an expert Symposium in Melbourne on the implementation of the newly-ratified UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture in Australia, with papers to be published in 2019. Research and publications on the impact of a criminal record on Aboriginal communities and on possible legal and policy responses.
Rafael Paternain
Professor and researcher at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic of Uruguay.
Personal Message: Is a very high honour to represent the British Society of Criminology as an international Ambassador. It’s an institution with global prestige, who’s academic and outreach production is particularly relevant to connect discussions and agendas on violence and crime.
I’ve been working for twenty five years in the field of criminological sociology (sometimes on the edge with the political sociology or social theory) and have travelled different matters: penitentiary system, statistical crime information, statistical information on crime, surveys of victimizations, studies on insecurity, political public ,public safety and research on police violence.
A part of my career has been conducted from the institutional level played from 1992 until 2010 at the Ministry of the Interior of Uruguay.
Also I have been participating in a lot of international projects (UNDP, OAS and IDB) and advising many Governments in Latin America. However, from the first day until today, my strongest commitment has been with the academic work and the training of new researchers in an area of studies that has grown significantly in recent years.
In this context it is a great opportunity to strengthen ties with the British Society of Criminology and promote channels of developments and consolidation of criminological thought in my country.
Email: rafaelpaternain@gmail.com
Recent activities: For years, my research has revolved around the institutional problems of security. First through a study on the policy of police in Uruguay (2005-2015) and its insertion in a comparative context in South America, and later by conducting a survey to measure the scope of police violence on teenagers and young people in Montevideo City. (Uruguay).
For these months I´m giving the first steps for the development of a line of work on victims of crime in Uruguay (subjectivities, discourses and policies).
Ann Skelton
Professor of Law, University of Pretoria
Personal message: I am a Professor of Law at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. My doctorate focused on Restorative Justice in relation to child offenders. Although my work encompasses a wide range of child rights issues several of my areas of interest fall within the field of criminology. The first of these is the promotion of child justice reform, particularly in other developing countries – I led the committee that drafted the South African Child Justice Act (2008), which has become a popular model of reform in other African countries and the Carribean. I was a recipient of a Juvenile Justice Without Borders prize in 2016, awarded by the International Juvenile Justice Observancy for my 20 years of work in reducing the number of children in prison in South Africa. In recent years I have been working on the harsh effects of new sexual offence laws on adolescents, which leads to consensual teen sex being criminalised, ages of consent being raised, the inclusion of young sex offenders on sex offenders’ registers, children being charged with possession of pornography for taking naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones.
I feel very enthusiastic about the use of strategic litigation to challenge such laws, as well as challenging harsh sentencing of child offenders and the effects of imprisonment of primary caregivers on their children. I have argued several such cases in the South African Constitutional Courtt, and I would like to see more litigation of this nature happening on the African continent and elsewhere.
Email: ann.skelton@up.ac.za
Recent activities: I am serving a four year term as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in May 2017, and have been nominated for re-election. I play an active role in promoting the rights of child offenders through the Committee – I chaired the working group that drafted the General Comment no 24 on the rights of children in child justice systems. Reducing the detention of children loomed large in my life during 2019: I was chairperson of the Advisory Board for the Global Study on Children Deprived of Their Liberty. This process involved states counting child and culminated I n a Report to the United Nations, as well as a broader report that is published as an omnibook. The findings of the study reveal the extent of deprivation of liberty, identifies good practice and proposes system changes to minimise, and in some contexts, eliminate the deprivation of children’s liberty.
Finally, I have an abiding interest in restorative justice and human rights– In 2019 I co-authored a monograph on the current situation of restorative justice in South Africa with Mike Batley. https://www.rjc.co.za/images/pdf/RestorativeJustice-Monograph2019.pdf