Reflections on the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control
DG Scott · Liverpool John Moores University · 2016
All academic writing is collaborative. It is collaborative in the sense that when we write academic discourse we inevitably engage with the ideas of others who have previously written on our topic areas; that when we publish our work it has often - and largely invisibly - benefitted from formal and informal reviews, suggestions and helpful comments from colleagues and other peers; and often, what we write can be an indirect and serendipitous result of being part of an intellectual milieu where we are able to freely discuss issues and debates collectively and learn through a dialogue with like-minded people. Without such a collaborative ethos academic discourse would be much the poorer and advances in scholarship much harder to come by. Those forums that facilitate collaboration should be treasured and their crucial contribution acknowledged. The European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control [European Group] is one such intellectual milieu in which the ideas explored in critical criminologies in the last five decades have germinated and developed.