Description

At present about 420,000 people die globally due to interpersonal violence, far more than in wars. Is it possible to reduce the levels of homicide by 50% in the coming three decades, and what are the policies needed to achieve such a goal? In September this year the United Nations will adopt the post-2015 global development goals, and violence reduction will likely play an important role. This talk will examine the universal mechanisms that are associated with large-scale variation in lethal violence. It will then examine the main policy implications of these mechanisms and show what we need to learn and what we need to do to achieve the ambitious goal of a worldwide reduction in violence.

About The Speaker

Manuel Eisner is Professor of Comparative and Developmental Criminology, Deputy Director of the Institute, and Director of the Social Science Research Methods Programme at the University of Cambridge. He is also Director of the Violence Research Centre. Previously he was Associate Professor of Sociology at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He has published 15 authored or edited books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters in English, German, and French. Professor Eisner is a member of several editorial and advisory boards of academic journals and book series. He was awarded the Fellowship of the Society of Experimental Criminology in 2006 and is this year’s recipient of the Sellin-Glueck award by the American Society of Criminology.

The academic work of Professor Eisner revolves around two main areas, namely research on macro-level historical patterns of violence and research on individual development and the causes and prevention of aggressive behaviour.