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- Last Updated: Wednesday, 07 August 2019 17:38
- Published: Saturday, 20 March 2010 19:39
- Written by Colin Sumner
- Hits: 16617
CrimeTalk can play an important role in research for both staff and students at all levels by providing interesting information, through its articles, comments, 'press cuttings', reviews, video clips; a vital part of the underbelly of research which gleans information, sources, resources, addresses, conference details, contacts and references.
You could even advertise your research here on these research pages. You could invite responses to your questions, for example. Just contact me, the editor, here at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and your information can soon reach a global niche audience. Of course, this also applies very much to research seminars and conferences that wish to reach global audiences.
The basic infrastructure of research has been undermined in recent times with the increasing distance between people, increasing commercialism, increasing competitiveness, the breakdown and decline of university facilities such as the old common room, the increased individualism in the eternally middle-class environment that is academia, reductions in research funding, the prioritization of teaching in some institutions, and the impossibility of getting any 'real work' done when one 'comes in'. My own experiences in North American universities, an insight into our future here in Europe, tells me that you are fortunate to ever see certain 'colleagues'! Indeed, the reason I am re-writing this page is that I have discovered in editing CrimeTalk sinvce 2010 that most academics and students are very wary about sharing anything with an open public and prefer their private groups if indeed they talk to anyone at all.
Good researchers and teachers need to talk to other people about their work - for various reasons. CrimeTalk offers an opportunity to replace declining old methods of informal talk and research networking with contemporary ones based on new technology. Of course there is e-mail and it still serves people well for private conversations, but there is an immense value in a public forum for informal communications about research, however littered with dangers, e.g. investment forums. It enables information to be shared. Even after a forum has died a natural death as the conversation dries up, the internet enables it to remain online, alive for others, as experience, ideas and information for future generations.
In the twenty-first century, we in the social sciences are very familiar with the value of qualitative methods such as oral history, focus groups and participant observation, and even perhaps, in the secret worlds of the surveillance society, with covert non-participant observation. Research today should include theory and theory formation; history and how to read it; methodology and the limits of any research method.
Preliminary interpretations and/or results cannot but improve with preliminary public airings such as can be provided by exposure in CrimeTalk. We welcome discussions of research at all levels from undergraduate dissertation chapters through draft doctoral work to pre-publication releases of big project findings. In some countries, such as Tanzania, the undergrad dissertation can be the building block of a country's research heritage. Even a big project, funded with government money, can avoid the pitfalls of a naive media release by early exposure of its progress here on CrimeTalk.
Of course, fully finished articles are always very welcome and further peer review can be arranged if writers feel they need different perspectives. One day soon we will reach a point where many can see that the editorial quality in online journals outside the publishing industry can be better than traditional journals and the current wave of 'open-source' channels of communication. The publishing world is changing fast. CrimeTalk can offer plenty of readers and high quality editorial review.
Colin Sumner, Editor of CrimeTalk, taught research methodology at Cambridge for over 20 years, working closely with many top scholars, both students and colleagues. Sometimes his students were professors, visiting from other countries, and sometimes his professorial colleagues were more like students in their enthusiasm and curiosity. For several years, he co-taught with Dr. Cathie Marsh, that brilliant scholar who showed how it was perfectly possible to be both a good theorist and a good research technician, and whose early death was such a great loss to the intellectual life of Cambridge University and is now marked by a research centre named after her at Manchester University, namely the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research. This section of CrimeTalk is dedicated to her.
