Frank Weerman has been appointed as endowed Professor in the newly established Youth Criminology chair at Erasmus School of Law. Prof. Weerman has commenced his appointment on August 1, 2016.
Erasmus School of Law is happy to announce this opportunity to enhance youth criminology research in Rotterdam and to have a chair connected to the thematic Master’s profile Youth Criminology. The chair will make a considerable contribution to the mission of high standard international and multi-disciplinary research and to the societal role of the Erasmus School of Law and the department of Criminology.
The chair is funded by the NSCR, the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (an institute funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). This institute is devoted to fundamental, independent and interdisciplinary research and is specialized in innovative data collection about offenders, offenses and judicial reactions on crime. The endowed chair of Prof. Weerman at the Erasmus School of Law will connect researchers and data collections and as such contribute to the role of the NSCR as a national center and facilitator of advanced research in crime and law enforcement.
Professor Weerman’s research will focus in particular on the role of peers and troublesome youth groups in criminal behaviour of young people, with special attention to the increasing role of internet in youth crime. The results will inform policies and practices to address metropolitan youth crime issues. The chair will connect to novel methods and theories within criminology, and to research already being conducted within the department of Criminology at the Erasmus School of Law.
The duration of the chair is 4 years with the possibility of an extension.
About prof. Frank Weerman
Prof. Weerman received his Masters degree in Sociology in 1992, with a specialization in Criminology. In 1998, he received his PhD at the University of Groningen, for which he conducted an empirical study to test and expand Hirschi’s social control theory on juvenile delinquency. From 1998 until 2000, he was a postdoc researcher at the University of Twente, where he wrote a book about co-offending, criminal cooperation and group formation. From 2000 onwards, he was affiliated at the NSCR as (senior) researchers. During this period, he was involved in initiating and coordinating two longitudinal survey studies on peers and criminal behaviour of adolescents, in which detailed information was collected about social networks of young people, their time use and membership of troublesome youth groups.