Criminology in Times of Transition
What is criminology? Who is criminology for?
BSC 2024 at the University of Strathclyde will showcase British Criminology, while also highlighting what is next for our discipline.
No one could deny the immense success criminology has enjoyed since being institutionalised as an academic field in the UK in the 1970s. Criminology is now one of the UK's boom disciplines. Its institutional and social status is clear in the ever-increasing number of students it attracts, and growing number of academic criminologists. Yet, how has criminology's independence, expansion, and privileged place at the forefront of British social sciences shaped and remade the discipline?
These successes are not uncontroversial. Some have argued that as criminology has stepped out of the shadow of sociology and criminal law, it has siloed itself further away from other disciplines and hence narrowed its intellectual base. Others have suggested that criminology is unable to contribute to the aims of global social justice until it wrestles with its deeply embedded colonial outlooks and complicitly with political power.
BSC 2024 will reflect on these developments and take an opportunity to ignite a dialogue that can highlight the field's richness, its achievements, and the still unrealised possibilities.