The journal International Criminology was launched in March 2021 with the stated aim of fostering theoretical, conceptual and empirical contributions in the field of global criminology and criminal justice. As a contributor to its inaugural issue, I argued that both the discipline and the journal of International Criminology emerged as an alternative to the unbalanced geopolitics of knowledge, in which some countries have a traditional or privileged position to develop theories, discourses and methodologies, establishing a Northern/central intellectual hegemony. For some time, the inequal concentration, influence and visibility of criminological knowledge may have been inevitable, as the original works in this field were derived from the experiences of the European society and were also structured by European theorical traditions; but criminology has since broadened its scope, both geographically and in terms of the diversity of its subjects. My contribution to the journal’s first issue concluded with some proposals for overcoming the challenges of developing an international criminology and for re-establishing influence and dialogue between academy and society. Drawing upon a combination of accessible publication data and interviews with key actors involved in the editorial process, the present study revisits the history of the journal to examine retrospectively how it has addressed these challenges over time, and to understand how this publishing experience has situated and oriented ‘culturally sensitive and globally mindful’ criminologies.

While criminology’s proximity to, and potential as a site of power is long-established, growing awareness of decolonial approaches has further highlighted its complicity in reinforcing academic imperialism. Against this backdrop, this paper explores the question: can criminology think outside itself and, if so, how? Exploring the potential contribution of the zemiological perspective as a ‘replacement discourse’ to that of crime, it starts by highlighting how the success of attempts to think ‘beyond criminology’ (such as that presented by zemiology) and the power relationships that sustain existing paradigms of thought, remains ambiguous and often contested. It argues that the prospects for thinking outside of dominant criminological paradigms and the potential of any ‘replacement discourse’ is limited, if it is not considered in the context of such theories’ production, consumption and utilisation. Thus, one of the issues facing radical efforts to think ‘beyond criminology’ is that often such attempts remain wedded to traditional models of what knowledge is and whose knowledge counts. Within this climate, this paper argues that what is needed are new ways to unsettle our very approaches to defining and producing knowledge in the first place and suggests the development of a utopian method as a potential means for doing so.

Criminology is a multidisciplinary field. Today, you can find criminologists amongst sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, geographers, political scientists, philosophers, lawyers, city planners, economists, and even architects. Where some see a great strength in numbers, others point to the inherent communication problem when trying to share findings and theories. While proliferation of theories of crime causation continues, some theorists have called for a need to resolve criminology’s theoretical crisis. In this talk, I explain how evolutionary criminology can become a tool that can help us in the monumental task of sifting through hundreds of theories of crime causation. Evolutionary theory offers unique insights about the nature of human behaviour and predispositions through which we organise our society. As a result, not only can it add an additional level of analysis to our existing understanding of etiology of crime, it can also help us unify existing theories as well as falsify the explanations that no longer serve the field. In this talk, I explain how evolutionary criminology can serve the field as well as offer an example of how we can use evolutionary frameworks to come up with theories of offending.

This year’s conference asks two simple, yet essential questions about the subject of criminology: what is it, and who is it for? To answer these questions, it is important to understand the origins of the subject. In undergraduate textbooks we have long presented a story of criminology going back to the dubious phrenology of Lombroso. We may include some 19th century statistics or sociology and, if we go further back, we give the label ‘classical criminology’ to a group of enlightenment philosophers (who would not have called themselves criminologists). In this paper this invented history of criminological thought is questioned. Instead, by looking at the much older disciplinary fields of philosophy and theology it is argued that the roots of criminological thought go much deeper. If we are happy to include the philosophy of the classical school, then why not dig deeper? It is contended that engagement with this longer history not only gives us a better understanding of what criminological thought was in the past, but also helps us to question what it is now, and what it could be in the future.