Lines of research: Migration, prisons, drugs

Biography: His main lines of research have been: drugs, migration and the penal system, sentencing, prison sentences and alternative sanctions. His most recent research was focused on prison sentences in Colombia. He has extensive experience teaching various subjects in Criminal Law (general and specialised), such as Introduction to Criminology, Applied Criminology, Comparative Criminology, Criminological Theories; Penitentiary Law and Crime Policy; at Bachelor's and Master's level he has taught subjects such as Prisons, Alternatives to Prison; Drugs and the Penal System; Migration and the Penal System. For several years he held the UNESCO Chair of Sustainable Human Development at the UdG. He has been a reserve judge at the Provincial Court of Girona since 2000.

Lines of research: penology, philosophy of criminal law, public opinion, democracy, penal policy.

Biography: Daniel Varona Gómez is full professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Girona, and reserve judge (criminal chamber) at the Provincial Court of Girona. He has been a visiting researcher at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Oxford. Currently he is also coordinator for the Bachelor's Degree in Criminology at the University of Girona.

Lines of research: Penology, prisons and penitentiary law, policing and society.

Biography: Ester Blay has a degree from the UB and a PhD in Law from the UAB. She has focused much of her pre and postdoctoral research on penology, in particular on alternatives to prison sentences with a supervisory aspect and the judicial application of the sentencing system. More recently she has conducted research on policing (policing models, victim support and public order). Her teaching activity has focused on subjects closely related to these two areas of research: Penology, prisons and penitentiary law, and police and society.

Lines of research: normative epistemology, legal conventionalism and neurolaw.

Biography: Maribel Narváez Mora (Barcelona 1966) graduated in Law from the University of Barcelona in 1989, obtained her diploma in advanced studies from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1995, and in 2000 earned her doctoral degree from the University of Girona, where she is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law. There she prepares subjects for the Bachelor's Degrees in Criminology, Political Science, Law and Advertising and Public Relations. She has had the good fortune to spend long periods of time at various educational centres such as the Dipartimento de Cultura Giurídica Giovanni Tarello at the University of Genoa (1997, 1999 and 2001-2002), and the Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto (2006-2008, 2016 and 2019). Neither of these two institution now bear those names, which may in a sense mean that they no longer exist, although the continuity of their staff, and of their activities, their excellent libraries, and even the solid buildings they occupy, clearly suggest otherwise. Her work focuses on methodological issues related to language and its capacity for expression and representation. She is the author of Wittgenstein and the Theory of Law (Marcial Pons, 2004).

Main lines of research: street gangs, organised crime, the criminology of genocide

Biography: Leanid Kazyrytski earned a doctorate in law from University of Girona (2008). He has been a lecturer and researcher at the University of Girona since 2004, at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya since 2010, and at the Police School of the Government of Catalonia’s Escola de Policia (Institute of Public Security of Catalonia) since 2010. He has been participating in research projects on subjects such as criminology applied to penology, the credibility of alternative sentencing, rehabilitation policies in the criminal field and in general, public opinion, and the enforcement of sentences in the era of the expansion of criminal law.

Lines of research: Crime policy, neoliberalism, prisons, judges, criminalisation of public protest (demonstrations)

Biography: Ignacio González Sánchez is doctor in Sociology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a lecturer in Criminology at the University of Girona. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of California (Berkeley), the London School of Economics, the University of Edinburgh and the Universidad Nacional del Litoral. He has published journal articles and book chapters on prisons, social theory and the criminalisation of social movements. Hi most recent books are ‘Neoliberalisme i càstig’ (Bellaterra, 2021) and ‘Els jutges penals: una introducció a l'estudi de la professió’ (Iustel, 2020, with Ester Blay). He has also edited two books: ‘Teoria social, marginalitat urbana’ and ‘Estat penal: Aproximacions al treball by Loïc Wacquant’ (Dykinson, 2012) and ‘Anomia, cohesió social i moralitat: Cent anys de tradició durkheimiana en Criminologia’ (Dykinson, 2018, together with Alfonso Serrano Maíllo).

Lines of research: alternative penal measures, gender and justice, the gender perspective in research, women and penal enforcement, judicial discretionality

Biography: Cristina Vasilescu holds a doctorate in Law/Criminology from the University of Girona where she did her doctoral thesis on alternatives to prison from a gender perspective. She has published articles in scientific journals on women and penal enforcement, justice and the gender perspective, alternatives to imprisonment and sex work. She was also a visiting researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge in 2019. She is currently a researcher and a lecturer on the Bachelor's Degree in Criminology at the UdG, the Bachelor's Degree in Criminology at the UOC and at the Government of Catalonia’s Escola de Policia (Institute of Public Security of Catalonia).

Main lines of research: Fraud; cybercrime; white collar crime; crime reporting and quantitative methodologies.

Biography: holds a Doctorate in Law (Criminology) from the University of Girona, and an MSc from the University of Portsmouth, England. He is currently an adjunct lecturer in Criminology at the University of Girona and at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, and is also a freelance lecturer and researcher, collaborating with the Criminology Centre for the Study and Prevention of Crime, the Department of Criminology at the University of Manchester, and the Institute of Public Safety in Catalonia, to give some examples.

Lines of research: negotiated criminal justice, alternative dispute resolution, gender and public safety.

Biography: Olivia Benítez graduated in Criminology (2018) and Law (2015) at the University of Girona. She completed the Master's Degree in Crime Analysis and Prevention at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (2019) and the Master's Degree in Conflictology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (2018). She is currently working on her doctoral thesis which focuses on the conformity of the accused in the Spanish criminal justice system under the supervision of Daniel Varona.

Lines of research: Police operations, the right to formal education in prisons, judicial discretion and the selectivity of the penal system

Biography: José María López-Riba holds a Doctorate in Law/Criminology from Pompeu Fabra University, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on police stops. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Public Law at the University of Girona. He also teaches a number of subjects on the Bachelor's Degree in Criminology at the University of Girona. His lines of research include: Police operations, the right to formal education in prisons, judicial discretion and the selectivity of the penal system.