2026 Election of ESC President: Wim Huisman

All of this means that, like my predecessors, I feel deeply connected to the Society, and every year I look forward to seeing many friends and colleagues again at the annual conference. As the current President, Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac, expressed so aptly in her candidate profile in ESC Newsletter 2024/2, the ESC feels to me like a “criminological home (away from home).”

I could also point to my CV as evidence that I have earned my stripes and possess the administrative experience necessary to wield the President’s gavel. Since 2009, I have led one of the largest Criminology departments in Europe, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and from 2015 to 2019 I served as President of the Dutch Society of Criminology. Between 2020 and 2022, I was Co-Chair of the Division of White-Collar Crime of the American Society of Criminology, and in 2024 I had the honour of receiving that Division’s Gilbert Geis Lifetime Achievement Award. Since 2018, I have served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Crime, Law and Social Change, which I like to describe as the mainstream journal for non-mainstream criminological topics. In addition, I am a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Transcrime, among other roles.

At the same time, I recognise that such a CV may also reflect a blind spot associated with the “old guard.” This awareness was reinforced by the intense discussions at and around EUROCRIM 2026 in Athens concerning the implications for the Society of the atrocities committed during the war in Gaza. During the heated debate and emotional contributions at the General Assembly, I found myself sympathising with the President, who had the difficult task of steering the discussion constructively, while at the same time feeling a strong sense of responsibility. In conversations with younger colleagues before, during, and after the conference in Athens, I learned that loyalty to, and identification with, the Society cannot be taken for granted.

Organising the annual conference is perhaps the Society’s most important activity, at least in terms of the time and effort invested. For early career researchers, attending the conference, where they present their first papers and establish their first international connections, is often far more important than membership of the Society itself. Yet early career scholars are the established scholars of tomorrow and constitute the criminological community of the future. It is therefore crucial that they feel engaged, represented, and heard by the Society and its leadership.

I also regard it as a major responsibility to ensure appropriate follow-up to the outcomes of the online vote on the submitted petitions, while continuing a constructive dialogue on these highly important yet complex issues. For a criminological society in particular, it is essential to maintain a clear position with regard to the most heinous forms of crime.

I consider the Working Groups to be the Society’s operational backbone. For many members, their primary sense of belonging is to the Working Group where they meet colleagues who share their scholarly interests, and only secondarily to the wider ESC. That certainly applied to me as well. In 2010, I co-founded the European Working Group on Organisational Crime (EUROC), and until last year I served on its board. With some bias, I might say that EUROC is one of the Society’s most active Working Groups. Every year, it succeeds in organising a wide range of excellent thematic sessions at the EUROCRIM conference. In addition, we have organised several stand-alone seminars, resulting in two edited volumes and two special issues. And, of course, there are the Working Group’s popular social gatherings during the conference! At the same time, I see many inspiring initiatives emerging from other Working Groups. Supporting and facilitating these groups therefore seems, to me, to be one of the Board’s key responsibilities.

Finally, I would like to champion greater attention to Criminology education within the ESC. Teaching is just as important as research. The popularity of Criminology degree programmes has led to the development of large Criminology departments in countries such as the United Kingdom, Portugal, Belgium, Hungary and the Netherlands. Education has thus become a major catalyst for the research activities of these departments. Unfortunately, in recent years I have also witnessed the closure of long-standing Criminology programmes at several universities.

The societal challenges that we study require strong academic programmes. While the Society is primarily a community of criminologists working in universities and research centres, and while the conference mainly attracts researchers, a significant part of our professional activity consists of teaching. Moreover, most of the criminologists we educate go on to work in professional practice rather than academia. Let us not forget that, according to Section 2 of the ESC Constitution, the Society aims to foster not only research, but also teaching and training, and it aims to bring together persons engaged in research, teaching and/or practice in the field of Criminology. I believe it would be a worthwhile challenge to explore how the ESC can further strengthen its contribution to education and professional practice. I sincerely hope that the members will grant me the mandate to pursue these goals within the board of the ESC.