Jan van Dijk interviewed by Catrien Bijleveld.
Florence, Italy, September 2023. 23rd Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (ESC).
European Criminology Oral History Project (ECOH).
The European Criminology Oral History project, better known as ECOH, was launched by the European Society of Criminology (ESC) at its Annual Conference (EUROCRIM) of 2016 in Münster. ECOH is an ESC long-term project, and it aims to build a collective memory of European criminology by creating an archive of videotaped interviews with people who have made important contributions, starting with founders of the ESC, former ESC presidents, and ESC award winners. In these interviews, we want to learn about people’s careers, about their research interests in the past and now, how and why they became involved in criminology, their career achievements, and their ideas about criminology in Europe and in their own countries. We also want to stimulate conversations, paying attention to both the person interviewed and the person interviewing. All the interviewers had worked with the people they interviewed, sharing with them a long experience of academic cooperation, usually as a former PhD student or a close colleague. The interactions add a special quality to the tales of a single career. This European archive, combined with the existing and still growing American one ([ Ссылка ]) as well as with Lieven and Marcelo’s Criminology Podcast ([ Ссылка ]), offer rich material for scholars interested in understanding historical, transnational, and comparative aspects of the development of criminology. The interviews are also useful for teaching and will provide immensely valuable material for future generations. Finally, they contribute to reinforce the identity of European criminology.
The interviews conducted during the ESC conferences in Münster 2016, Cardiff 2017, Sarajevo 2018, Ghent 2019, Malaga 2022, and Florence 2023 have been edited and are available on the YouTube channel of the ESC ([ Ссылка ]). We will continue to interview European criminologists during upcoming EUROCRIM conferences.
From 2016 to 2018, the project was under the supervision of former ESC President Rossella Selmini. She was assisted by Marco Calaresu and videomaker Enrico Rassu. Beginning in 2019, the reins of supervision were handed over to former ESC Board member José A. Brandariz, who, in collaboration with Silvia Rodríguez-López and, since 2023, Ignacio González-Sánchez, has been leading the ECOH project forward. Enrico Rassu continues to be a key figure in the project, providing his technical and artistic expertise.
