Professor of Criminology, University of Glasgow
Alistair Fraser is Professor of Criminology at the University of Glasgow, and formerly 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. His work seeks to make theoretically ambitious, empirically grounded, policy relevant contributions to academic and public debate. He recently completed a major 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 (https://changingviolence.org).
Alistair is the author of two books: Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City (OUP, 2015) and Gangs and Crime: Critical Alternatives (Sage, 2017) and is authored or co-author of 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.
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.