Today, Sophie Blanchard talks about her recent presentation at the 24th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology in Bucharest.
Working as Project and Impact Manager for the Humber Violence Prevention Partnership evaluation team (Violence Reduction Unit) within the Criminology Department, gave me the exciting opportunity to take part in a pre-arranged panel with the rest of the research team at the European Society of Criminology Annual Conference, held this year from 11th to 14th September, in Bucharest, Romania. Here, we intended to discuss our findings from our mid-point evaluation, which you can read here.
The conference, which was held in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bucharest, was filled with lots of fascinating papers on a range of different topics. We were able to attend the opening plenary, which was given by Professor Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac, President of the European Society of Criminology, and Deans at the host University. They laid out the history and success of the conference and highlighted the evolution of trends in the discipline of Criminology over the years.
I was able to attend lots of interesting papers whilst at the conference on a range of topics. I found those that were within my interests especially fascinating, including human trafficking research papers, cybercrime, and the prevalence of sharing intimate images online. I also had the chance to attend a book review of ‘New Forms of Human Trafficking’. This created an interesting debate on defending their research which analyses new forms of human trafficking, including sexual exploitation which were identified after COVID-19.
Our team (Professor Simon Green, Professor Iain Brennan, Dr Nicola O’Leary, Dr Charlotte Russell, Dr Victoria Burton, Dr Craig Barlow, and I) had offered a panel entitled “Breaking the Cycle: Youth Violence Prevention, Trauma-Informed Practice, and Multi-Agency Strategies.” The panel focused on our mid-point evaluation of the Humber Violence Prevention Partnership, highlighting the benefits of a trauma-informed, strengths-based partnership and evaluation. It consisted of four presentations which focused on: a national picture of the Violence Reduction Units; a local picture of the Violence Reduction Units; a deep dive into our data collection and our findings; and trauma-informed approaches to criminal justice. Abstracts from the entire panel can be found here.
Dr Nicola O’Leary and I talked about “‘On the field’: case study of sports interventions for young people (at risk).” Our paper aimed to identify key messages and lessons learned from intervention projects that attempted to engage young people at risk of violence/knife carrying in the Humberside region of the UK. We did this by discussing the two forms of data collection we used (proforma survey and in-depth case studies) and what these brought about in terms of enriching data for our in-depth case studies.
My role in our paper was to discuss the methodology and findings in terms of both survey and interviews. I then delved into a discussion which focused on the opportunities and challenges, the two forms of data collection had revealed. Being able to present our findings to a large audience was exhilarating and daunting, but I am thankful for the opportunity.
Overall, our panel was highly successful with a huge audience of over 50 attendees and lots of engaging questions, leading to a great networking opportunity.