New ECOH interview: Josep M Tamarit- Sumalla

Josep-Maria Tamarit is a professor of criminal law and criminology at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and the current President of the ESC, elected in the Malaga conference in September 2022. A long-time member of both the ESC and the World Society of Victimology, Tamarit has played a vital part in the recent development of criminology studies in Spain. Although Josep-Maria Tamarit is a prolific author making contributions in a variety of subfields, his research concerns have been chiefly focused on victimology topics in the last decades.

Understandably, victimology topics rank high in Tamarit’s European Criminology Oral History (ECOH) interview, which was conducted by his UOC colleague Antonia Linde in the framework of the ESC Florence conference and has been just released on the ECOH website. In this interview, Tamarit insightfully reflects as well on a phenomenon that has profoundly conditioned the development of criminology across Europe, namely the pivotal contribution made by heterodox, inquisitive criminal law scholars to the emergence of criminology as a distinct academic field in many – if not most - European jurisdictions. The relation between Spanish scholars and Spanish-speaking academic communities in the Global South is also addressed in this recorded conversation. In addition, Tamarit shares inspiring thoughts on the emergence and consolidation of criminology in Spain, the marked diversity characterising crime and criminal justice studies across Europe and the challenges being currently faced by criminology at the continental level.