New ECOH interview: Sveinung Sandberg
editor
ESC
08-05-2025
Sveinung Sandberg is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oslo. His research interests are related to illegal drugs, processes of marginalisation, the management of masculinities in violent contexts and radicalisation. He is an advocate for Narrative Criminology, using qualitative methods for grasping the role linguistics and the way people tell their own stories can help understand different processes. Theoretically, he has used Bourdieu’s concept of capital in order to understand street culture, and he is currently studying different prison cultures comparatively.
Sveinung Sandberg was interviewed by Thomas Ugelvik during the 2024 ESC conference in Bucharest. In this interview, Sandberg explains his move into Criminology while doing research on street drug dealers. After reviewing the process of transformation of Norwegian criminology moving away from classical abolitionism towards a more internationalised dynamic, the challenges of training young researchers are discussed. The importance of language and storytelling is gathered around the push for a Narrative Criminology, and some theoretical and causality issues are discussed. The interview ends with some insights into his current research, where he - and his team- are comparing seven different Latin American countries in terms of prison culture, practices and identities through the use of life-stories.