Major European Grant to understand organised crime
Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Criminology Federico Varese is one of the recipients of the highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, it was announced yesterday.
The project – CRIMGOV – will provide a new, tripartite framework to analyse organised criminal activity around the world, and, in a field of study where good-quality data is scarce, will build up valuable datasets which are time-consuming and difficult to compile.
ERC Advanced Grants support leading researchers with a recognised track record of research achievements. The grants are part of the Horizon 2020 programme, and award a total of €507 million to 209 researchers across Europe.
Speaking to the Department of Sociology yesterday, Federico said:
“It is a great honour – and a great responsibility – to receive an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. I am very much looking forward to starting these interrelated research projects on the activities of crime groups, with the aim to go beyond the catch-all concept of ‘organised crime’. I will study how organised crime groups produce, trade, and govern in a variety of settings across the globe.”
Federico is also the author of Mafia Life: Love, Death and Money at the Heart of Organised Crime (Profile Books, 2017). For more information about the CRIMGOV project, see the Department of Sociology’s news story.