Professor Manuel Eisner

Manuel Eisner is the Wolfson Professor of Criminology. He was Director of the Institute of Criminology from 2022 until 2026. He is a historian and sociologist by training and joined the Institute of Criminology in 2000. His research revolves around the role of violence and its control in the development of human societies, and in the development of humans over the life course. He has conducted research on the history of homicide since the Middle Ages, and how violence is shaped by structures of power, state control, and the ways in which the self is defined by cultural forces. He is also one of the principal investigators of the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood, a 20-year longitudinal study from ages 7 to 26.