Professor Alistair Fraser
- Professor (Sociological & Cultural Studies)
email:
Alistair.Fraser@glasgow.ac.uk
Room 210, Sccjr, Ivy Lodge, 63 Gibson Street
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1157-4379Biography
Alistair Fraser is Professor of Criminology at the University of Glasgow, and Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.
He teaches and researches issues of youth violence, street culture, and urban crime, with a particular interest in the global gang phenomenon, and works with ethnographic, creative and interdisciplinary ways of working. His work seeks to make theoretically ambitious, empirically grounded, policy relevant contributions to academic and public debate. He is currently leading a new study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), investigating the meaning and utility of 'public health' approaches to violence reduction in Scotland and England.
Alistair is the author of two books: the first, Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City (OUP, 2015) was shortlisted for the BBC/BSA Ethnography Award and co-awarded the British Society of Criminology Book Prize. Reviews have been published in Global Crime, Scottish Justice Matters the British Journal of Criminology and Crime Media Culture, as well as media reporting of the work in the Daily Record, Sunday Herald and Evening Times. His second book, Gangs and Crime: Critical Alternatives was published by Sage in 2017. He has authored or co-authored more than thirty other publications in journals or edited collections, in outlets including the British Journal of Criminology, British Journal of Sociology, Theoretical Criminology and The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. He is on the International Advisory Board for the Journal of Youth Studies, and is an Associate Editor of Criminology & Criminal Justice.
Alistair is a regular contributor to public debate on issues of crime and justice and has written for the Wall Street Journal, Herald, Scotsman and Conversation as well as making contributions to BBC Scotland, BBC’s ‘Timeline’, STV's 'Scotland Tonight', and BBC Radio Four's 'Thinking Allowed.' In 2017-18, Alistair was selected as a BBC/AHRC ‘New Generation Thinker’ and collaborated with BBC Radio 3 on a series of broadcasts on themes of gangs, street culture, gentrification, and boredom. In addition Alistair works to engage with different audiences, most recently in a collaboration with the People's Palace Museum, Glasgow, to create a 'digital alternative' guide to the displays for secondary school students.
Alistair also has a longstanding interest in global and comparative criminology. Prior to joining Glasgow spent four years as Assistant Professor in Criminology in the Department of Sociology, University of Hong Kong,where he was awarded the Faculty of Social Sciences 'Outstanding Teaching Award' for 2013-14. He continues to work and collaborate with colleagues at the University of Hong Kong, mostly recently co-editing a special issue of the Crime Media Culture on the theme of Asian criminology. In 2018 he was awarded an 'Outstanding Paper' award by the Hong Kong Studies Association for a paper from the same issue.
Alistair welcomes prospective PhD applicants in the areas of youth gangs, street culture, illicit markets, policy mobility, violence and violence reduction, urban ethnography, organised crime, and global and comparative criminology. He is particularly interested in studies using comparative, qualitative, ethnographic, digital or visual methodologies.
Research interests
Youth crime and justice
Gangs and subcultures
Organised crime
Violence and violence reduction
Policy mobility
Global and comparative criminology
Urban sociology
Ethnography and qualitative methods
Oral history
Research groups
- Criminology
Grants
2020 - 2023 What Worked: Policy Mobility and the Public Health Approach to Violence. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
2017 – 2018 Reimagining Crime and Justice: An Alternative Guide. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Impact Acceleration).
2016 – 2018 Community Experiences of Serious and Organised Crime. Funded by the Scottish Government.
2014 – 2015 (Re)Imagining Gangs: A Study of Gang Identity in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Funded by the University of Hong Kong.
2013 – 2015 (Re)Imagining Youth: A Comparative Sociology of Youth Leisure in Scotland and Hong Kong. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and Research Grants Council (HK).
2013 – 2015 Reducing Hong Kong's Youth Crime Through Community Intervention: An Evaluation of Operation Breakthrough. Funded by Operation Breakthrough.
2012 – 2015 How Young People Obtain Psychoactive Drugs in Hong Kong. Research Grants Council (HK).
2012 – 2014 Excavating the Walled City: Youth and Order in Hong Kong’s Forbidden Enclave. Funded by University of Hong Kong.
Supervision
Casey, R. (2017-) 'The lived experience of penal electronic monitoring' (PhD, University of Glasgow)
Jankowski, K.(2019- ) 'Dread and Confidence: Navigating Adulthood in Generation Rent' (PhD, University of Glasgow)
Petcu, O. (2020- ) Mobile Markets: Youth Culture, Illicit Drugs and Social Media' (PhD, University of Glasgow)
Alnasser, F. (2018) 'Youth transitions and social change in Kuwait: tensions between tradition and modernity' (PhD, University of Glasgow)
Smith, E. (2019) 'Illicit Markets in the Global City: The Cultural Property Trade in Hong Kong' (PhD, University of Glasgow)
Teaching
2015 – 2017 Course Coordinator: The Global Criminal Economy; Youth, Gangs & Globalization; Sociology of the City; Research Methods in Criminology – University of Glasgow, UK.
2011 – 2015 Course Coordinator: Social Problems; Youth & Delinquency; Youth Crime in the Global City; Methods of Research in Criminology – University of Hong Kong, HKSAR.
