The International Criminological Research Unit (ICRU) was formally ratified by the School Research and Impact Committee in 2014.
Our Mission
Our core mission is to:
- Develop, promote and support high-quality research and postgraduate training on issues relating to criminology, criminal justice and harm;
- Advance cutting-edge theoretical and empirical knowledge, and research methodologies;
- Work across a wide range of academic, policy and practice communities to engage reciprocal knowledge exchange and make impactful evidence-based criminal justice and social justice interventions;
- Communicate clearly and disseminate widely to extend public understanding on issues related to criminology, criminal justice and harm.
To assist in achieving our core mission, ICRU aims to:
- Host visiting researchers (particularly, although not exclusively, international visitors);
- Co-ordinate a range of events, seminars, symposia and conferences;
- Forge partnerships, exchanges and research collaborations locally, regionally, nationally and internationally;
- Facilitate collaborative writing/publishing projects and grant applications/capture (including inter-disciplinary research);
- Provide, promote, and support a ‘home’ for a lively community of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers.
ICRU’s core mission dovetails with the vision and values espoused in the SSPC Research Strategy 2020-23 by:
- Contributing to an internationally acknowledged and vibrant centre of social science research;
- Making research events and publications as meaningfully public as is possible;
- Promoting critical research that interrogates power, inequalities, and uneven distributions of social value;
- Reflecting the pluralist nature of SSPC in terms of different topical foci and theoretical/empirical approaches.
Research Expertise
Our established areas of research expertise include: criminal law and criminal justice, critical criminology, comparative criminal justice regimes and international criminology, corporate crime and the crimes of the powerful, gender, crime and criminal justice, histories of criminal justice and historical criminology, human rights, juvenile/youth crime, juvenile/youth justice and youth criminology, policing, risk discourses, criminal justice and criminology, security, and victimology.
Funding Applications
ICRU members from within SSPC are entitled to bid for funds to deliver a cluster event that aligns with ICRU’s objectives using a recently designed application process. A committee consisting of the SSPC Research Leads (Dr David Baker and Dr Alice Ievins), ICRU Co-Leads (Dr Laura Naegler and Dr Joe Greener), Publics & Practices Lead (Dr Nicole Vitellone), will evaluate applications and make decisions about the allocation of funds in relation to such bids.
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