25 years of the ESC - the memories of Rossella Selmini (ESC President 2016-2017)

Our Past, Our Future: Building the Memory of European Criminology

As a former President of the ESC and a long-standing member of the Society, I am honoured to contribute to the celebration of its 25th anniversary. Among the many memories I hold, the most meaningful is the European Criminology Oral History Project (ECOH), which I launched in Münster in 2016 and coordinated until 2018. With a background in Criminology, history, and qualitative research, I felt it was increasingly urgent to preserve the collective memory of Criminology in Europe through intergenerational conversations. The project’s success confirmed the value of this idea.

This endeavour would not have been possible without the support of the ESC Board, of the conference local organisers in Münster,  and the small, mostly Italian team that runs the project. In the photograph from the first interviews in 2016, I am joined by Marco Calaresu, now Professor of Political Science at the University of Sassari (I); Enrico Rassu, now an accomplished photographer and documentary filmmaker; and Daniele Florio, then a student at Münster University (Robert Prümper, also a Münster student at the time, is unfortunately not pictured). We aimed to be professional yet informal—as the blackboard behind us suggests. We worked hard, learned a great deal, and enjoyed the process. I am pleased that the project continues to thrive, strengthening the vitality of the ESC and the distinctiveness of European criminology.

As the Society grows, safeguarding our shared memory—of who we were, who we are, the diversity of our approaches, and above all, our values—becomes ever more important. In these challenging times, marked by conflict, atrocities, the rise of authoritarianism and populism, environmental crisis, and threats to academic freedom, our commitment must be stronger than ever. May these interviews remind us that we are part of a scientific community ready to face the challenges ahead.