Criminology

Criminology at Edinburgh is home to a collegiate and committed group of scholars and students. Building on a distinguished and impactful legacy of criminological research at the Edinburgh Law School, we take a broad view of the study of crime, criminology and criminal justice. We are proud to place equal importance on theoretical and policy-focused research, and to incorporate perspectives from the local to the global. Our work encompasses a broad range of methodologies including qualitative approaches, large-scale quantitative data analysis, and mixed methods. We actively incorporate our research into our teaching, ensuring it is current and topical.

We work collaboratively with policy makers and practitioners from Scotland, the wider UK, and internationally.  Our research has been highly influential in supporting policy making and legislative change in Scotland through our working partnerships with organisations such as the Scottish Government, Police Scotland, the Scottish Prison Service and the voluntary sector, as well as our engagement with communities and the wider public. We are committed to shaping how problems of crime and justice are thought about in order to build safe and just societies. 

Collectively, our research interests include: imprisonment, penal theory and policy; democratic governance and politics; the sociology of punishment; citizenship, disenfranchisement and human rights; policing practice, governance and accountability; communities and crime; policing urban spaces and remote islands; global, transnational and transitional justice; violence, hate crime and crimes of atrocity; criminal justice reform in post war states; youth crime and justice; crime trends, patterns and inequalities; public health approaches to justice; law enforcement and Covid-19; cybercrime, cybersecurity and surveillance; judicial culture and sentencing practice; and comparative criminology. We also have interests in the impact of academic-practitioner collaborations, and the uses of criminological knowledge in shaping policy and practice.

We are home to the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a large-scale longitudinal study of pathways into and out of offending which has been running for 25 years; and the Policing the Pandemic project which is investigating the use and impact of police enforcement during the pandemic. Our research is supported by three inter-institutional, Scottish research centres: the Scottish Centre of Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR); the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR); and the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR).

As well as a range of undergraduate courses, we teach two Postgraduate Masters programmes: an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice; and an MSc in Global Crime, Justice and Security. We have a large and diverse community of PhD students and warmly welcome applications and enquiries from prospective students with an interest in our areas of expertise.