Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology, awarded major European Research Council Advanced Grant
Professor Federico Varese has been awarded a highly-competitive European Research Council Advanced Grant for a project which explores how organised crime groups produce, trade and govern in a variety of settings across the world.
ERC Advanced Grants support leading researchers with a recognised track-record of research achievements. The funding announced today, part of the Horizon 2020 programme, is worth a total of €507 million and will go to 209 researchers across Europe for a range of groundbreaking projects. ERC President Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon said: "We look forward to seeing what major insights and breakthroughs will spring from this investment and trust".
Professor Federico Varese said: "It is a great honour - and a great responsibility - to receive an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. I am very much looking forward to starting these interrelated research projects on the activities of crime groups, with the aim to go beyond the catch-all- concept of 'organised crime'. I will study how organised crime groups produce, trade and govern in a variety of settings across the globe."
Varese's project aims to establish a new framework for the understanding of organised crime. Focusing on production, trade and governance, it will study a broad range of organised crime in depth, from local cybercrime production hubs in Europe, to the international trade of drugs from Colombia to Europe, and the emergence of criminal governance inside and outside prisons. Breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries between the social sciences and adopting a global outlook, the project will overturn long-held theoretical approaches and produce substantial new findings.
European Research Council Advanced Grants have been awarded to five University of Oxford researchers. The Department of Sociology currently has five projects supported by ERC Advanced/ Consolidator grants.
