About
Digital devices and practices are spread across all fields of criminology. Criminologists need to be able to identify and analyse the technologies, practices and social dynamics that emerge from their growing relevance. Many aspects that characterise digitalisation have roots in analogue processes of systematising knowledge about crime and control. Yet, the advent of digital offline and online technologies, big data, platforms, algorithms and AI also gives rise to change.
Digitalisation generates new types of crime, modi operandi and victimisation, as well as affecting criminalisation, surveillance, policing, justice and punishment. As technologies enable new types of agency in the sites and settings relevant to criminologists, they also change the influence of people and institutions. Hence, key criminological themes such as societal values and ethics, power, democracy, governance, control, legitimacy and knowledge creation experience shifts that require careful analysis.
Aims
Given these rapid developments, time and space is needed to reflect about the ways in which digitalisation transforms criminological phenomena. Researchers associated with this field examine the interrelationships between past and present, future and analogue, digital and offline, online and low-tech, high technology and humans. One of the main objectives is to cast light on technological processes and rationalities that usually remain hidden in complex systems, and challenge prevalent assumptions about what digital technologies can deliver.
To further develop the field, researchers within digital criminology regularly gather in the Research group on Digital Criminology. There, they work on developing new research questions, theoretical perspectives, as well as methods and practical approaches for projects that address ever-changing environments. The focus is on knowledge sharing and collaboration among undergraduate and doctoral students. They also aim to actively shape public debates and political discussions.
Fields of interest
Researchers at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law bring their specific area of expertise into digitised contexts, such as drug markets and communities, punishment and imprisonment, security practices and politics, courtroom practices, migration and border control, radicalisation, forensics and policing.
Recurring themes include:
- the role of technologies in crime and control
- online representations of people and practices, self-presentation, subcultures
- digital state and sub-state practices and their interaction
- privatisation of knowledge and competence, (in)transparencies and business secrets, commercialisation and security markets, the use of "public" data
- international dynamics, collaborations and technology export
- videos, visualisations and the technological gaze
- information collection and archives, registers, databases
- labs, data work, digital and data practices, routines and everyday practices
- prediction and prevention practices
- broader understandings of privacy and publicity, risks and trust
- discrimination and bias, discourses about legality and regulation
- radicalisation, information politics and echo chambers, propaganda, narratives and framings on digital platforms
- confluences of biology and technology, biometry and genetic surveillance
- different abilities to access the Internet and digital services, due to control, lack of technological resources or digital literacy
- digital methods: offline and online, digital and non-digital, issues of accessing populations online, of gathering data online, ethics, digital ethnographies
Selected research projects
- Bodies of Evidence (BoE)
- Digital DNA
- Incels, involuntary celibacy and internet radicalization
- Private knowledge, public issues: Digitalization and private economies of knowledge in criminal justice (CRIMKNOW)
Subjects taught
Selected publications
- Kaufmann, Mareile and Heidi Mork Lomell (ed.), De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Criminology. Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter). ISSN 978-3-11-106193-1. p. 1–19. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111062037
- Vestad, M. (2024). The persistent attractions of low-tech: Challenging the efficiency paradigm of forensic technology. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 26(2), 292–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/14613557241231164
