Criminology in Europe

The WG-QRME was launched during the 2017 ESC annual conference in Cardiff and, so far, has close to 80 registered members from a variety of universities and interested in a multitude of research topics. The WG-QRME aims to connect with the rest of the ESC working groups, thus providing the chance to focus on both topics and methodologies. Simultaneously, it intends to provide ESC members the opportunity to exchange and cooperate in improving qualitative methodologies and epistemologies in the study of crime, deviance, policing, and social control more broadly. It creates possibilities for discovering, discussing and overcoming common challenges and difficulties in research using qualitative methodologies and epistemologies; it sustains close networking and cooperation on research and education projects, exploring related methodological novelties; and it contributes to the existing literature on qualitative criminological research.

Last year, the WG-QRME presented four pre-arranged sessions for the ESC annual conference of 2018: two on ‘Qualitative research methodologies and epistemologies’; a EUROC & WG-QRME panel: ‘The use of qualitative methods in researching organisational and white-collar crime’; and ‘Developing narrative criminology’. Moreover, WG-QRME members gave a total of 43 individual presentations in various topics. At the time of writing this report, and while the official program for the ESC annual conference of 2019 is yet to be finished, a rough number of two pre-arranged panels and close to 10 presentations have been submitted specifically under the WG-QRME banner.

The WG-QRME has also been promoting interaction and critical debates among European researchers with an interest in qualitative methodologies and epistemologies, namely by co-organising the ‘Between Edges and Margins. Innovative Methods in the Study of Deviance’ conference that took place in Ghent, 13-14 September 2018. WG-QRME continues to be one of the three partners (alongside Ghent University and Vrije Universiteit Brussels) in organising the annual (third edition will take place in July 2019) specialist training for PhD students ‘Elites and experts as subjects of qualitative research: challenges in design, execution and analysis’.

By means of a regular newsletter, the WG-QRME has been exchanging information among members on scientific events, publications, and funding opportunities relating to qualitative methodologies and epistemologies. Simultaneously, the WG-QRME is active on social media, namely via Facebook, with 151 followers (‘Qualitative Research Methodologies and Epistemologies’) and Twitter with 102 followers (@QrmeWg).

The group intends to pursue its goals and objectives of fostering qualitative methodological and epistemological reflections and innovations in Criminology. It also intends to reinforce the network by continuing to recruit new members and building more and better venues for communication, exchange and scientific growth.

Julie Tieberghien is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and ­Social Law at the University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium

Olga Petintseva is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law at the Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Rita Faria is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Criminology, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Yarin Eski is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Liverpool Centre for Advanced Policing Studies at the Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK