Academic Profile

Research Interests: organized crime; social network analysis; theories of choice.

Federico Varese joined the University in 2003. In 2006, he obtained the title of Professor of Criminology. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Williams College and William H. Orrick Visiting Professor at Yale University. Formerly a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, he obtained a DPhil in Sociology from the University of Oxford in 1997. He holds a degree in Political Science from Bologna University and an MPhil in Social and Political Theory from King's College, Cambridge. His main research interests are the study of organised crime, corruption, Soviet criminal history, and the dynamics of altruistic behaviour. He is currently working on the application of network analysis to criminal behaviour and the rescue of persecuted minorities during the Nazi occupation of Europe.

He has published papers in Law and Society Review, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, Political Studies, Cahiers du Monde Russe and Rationality & Society, and book chapters in edited volumes. His book, The Russian Mafia (Oxford University Press 2001), won the Ed Hewitt Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in 2002 and has appeared in Dutch and Polish. His new book, Mafias on the Move, appeared in 2011 with Princeton University Press and, in Italy, with Einaudi Editore. He has been the editor of the journal Global Crime.