Professor Paolo Campana
- Professor of Criminology
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About
Paolo Campana is Professor of Criminology and Director of the Violence Research Centre, Institute of Criminology (University of Cambridge). He is also a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Prior to moving to Cambridge, he was a Research Fellow at the Extra-Legal Governance Institute, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford and a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He was also a member of the Centre for Corporate Reputation at the Said Business School, Oxford. He held Invited Professorships at the Department of Sociology, University of Utrecht (The Netherlands, 2021) and at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHSS, Paris, 2023).
He is the Editor of the Clarendon Series in Criminology, Oxford University Press. He sits on the Editorial Board for Criminology, the British Journal of Criminology, and Trends in Organised Crime. He also sits on the Research and Ethics Committee of the London Metropolitan Police.
He is a member of the scientific committee of the UNODC International Conference on Governance, Crime and Justice Statistics.
Research
Paolo Campana’s work explores different forms of organised crime and their impact on countries, neighbourhoods, and individuals. He has examined issues related to gangs and organised crime groups, including their emergence and spatial movement – both locally and internationally. He has extensively studied migrant smuggling, human trafficking, and drug trafficking, and has explored the relational mechanisms that drive violence and victimisation among young people and at-risk populations.
A central focus of his work is the application of network analysis to model criminal phenomena, from the internal dynamics of organised crime groups to the workings of illegal markets and violence. His work has appeared in several leading international journals and has been translated into Chinese, French, and Italian.
He has served as principal investigator on numerous grants funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, and the Youth Endowment Fund.
He is also the author of the Council of Europe’s official report on Online and Technology-facilitated Trafficking in Human Beings.
His work has received international media coverage, including reports from Reuters, AP, Washington Post, Guardian, Sky News, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Focus (Germany), Society (France), Le Scienze, Times of Malta, Vanguard (Nigeria), and Wired. He has contributed as an invited expert to several media outlets, including BBC Radio 4 and BBC News.
Teaching and supervision
Paolo Campana teaches a course on “Organised Forms of Crime” for the MPhil in Criminology, and he is the course co-convenor for the third-year course “Further Topics in Criminology” for the Undergraduate Tripos in Human, Social and Political Science (HSPS; Part II, Joint Track Sociology and Criminology). He is also contributing to the statistical training provided to students enrolled in the MPhil in Criminology.
Prospective Ph.D. students
Paolo Campana welcomes proposals from prospective Ph.D. students with an interest in organised forms of criminality. The latter includes organised crime and gangs, human trafficking and smuggling, and drug trafficking.