dr. (Gwen) G van Eijk

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Gwen van Eijk is a criminologist and urban sociologist and currently Assistant Professor of Criminology.

Gwen’s research focuses on the role of social inequality in everyday life and public policy. Through interviewing and analyses of policy, practice and public discourse, she seeks to understand how social inequality is shaped and reinforced, and to formulate guidelines for safeguarding inclusion.

Her current research investigates the relation between socioeconomic inequality and crime control, focusing on sentencing, rehabilitation and urban safety policy. Key questions are: To what extent and in what ways does the criminal justice system reflect, and shape, socioeconomic inequality? How do criminal-legal professionals think about and deal with socioeconomic marginality of justice-involved individuals and at-risk groups? And how does addressing socioeconomic marginality in policy and practice work to exclude or rather include marginalized groups?

In 2013 she was awarded a NWO Veni grant for her project ‘Exclusion and inclusion through crime control: How perceptions of social class divisions among criminal justice agents shape crime control policy and practice’ (2014-2017). In 2015-2016, she was a Visiting Scholar at the City University of New York and in 2010-2011 she spent a year at the University of Oxford as Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Criminology.

Gwen has published in international and Dutch journals such as Punisment and Society, Feminist Criminology, Sociology, Urban Studies and Sociologie on topics such as urban policy, social mixing and segregation in urban neighbourhoods, gentrification, social interactions and perceptions of safety in public space, and perceptions and experiences of class differences and social hierarchy. She is an editor of the Dutch academic journal Sociologie (open access). Recently she has edited a special issue on inequality in the Netherlands (in Dutch). She writes for several blogs among which her own class in/justice and Sargasso, and you can find her on Twitter.