New ECOH interview: Richard Sparks

Richard Sparks is Professor of Criminology at the University of Edinburgh and was Head of the School of Law from 2014-2017. He is also involved with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, where he was a founding Co-Director from 2006-2016. He holds an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven. His work is varied and covers research regarding media representations of crime, everyday feelings of insecurity, and public responses to it. He has worked on prisons, with special attention to legitimation problems arising from the need to exert control over imprisoned citizens. There is lasting concern with the relation between penal policies and democratic policies underlying his scientific production, which has been receiving a more detailed attention over the last years.

Richard Sparks was interviewed by Eammon Carrabine during the 2023 ESC conference in Florence. In this interview, Sparks explains his first intellectual steps, related to sociology, and then overviews his career through his main books -almost always written in collaboration with other scholars. Thus, his first academic influences are highlighted, as well as those of his later colleagues, especially regarding how different approaches were used to study prisons, media, feelings, democratic politics or the role of public criminology. The interview closes stressing the importance of comparative research beyond the borders of European criminology.