About the centre

The Centre for Global Criminology studies crime, criminalisation and other border and boundary crossing phenomena around the world

According to the UN, numbers of transnational, cross-border crimes have drastically increased in our global day and age. Sometimes referred to as 'the dark side of globalisation', the UN and other pundits point to a rise in, for example, drug trafficking, people trafficking and smuggling, mobile organised crime groups (MOCGs), financial crimes, environmental crimes, cyber crimes and terrorism. It is even suggested that the economic value of transnational, cross-border crimes may amount to 10 per cent of the global gross product, growing at seven times the rate of growth of legal trade. Looking at the scale of it, researchers at CGC are engaged in building up both qualitative and quantitive knowledge about such global criminal issues.

However, we at CGC are also interested in understanding the increasing amount of policing and other attempts of governing (inter)national borders and boundaries which are happening around the world. This also includes an interest in examining the growing political and public appeal towards criminalising or in other ways minimising the movement and actions of given peoples.   

Through our studies of crime and criminalisation, we seek to engage in and further develop methodological, ethical and analytical concerns and possibilities surrounding these research themes by using a mixed-methods approach. The core group of researchers at the centre comes from anthropology, sociology, political science and economics, and the centre and its researchers are closely affiliated with other international scholars working with these and related fields.