Prof David Nelken, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Macerata, Visiting Professor of Criminology (from October 2010 till September 2013)

Prof Nelken received a PhD in Criminology from the Cambridge Institute of Criminology and then taught in the law departments at Edinburgh 1976-1984 (where he was also a panel member of the Scottish juvenile justice Childrens' Hearings system) and University College London 1984-1990. In 1990 he moved to Italy where he is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Macerata (and was also involved in crime policy committees). He maintains a strong connection with the UK as Distinguished Professor of Law at Cardiff Law School and Honorary Professor of law at the LSE. In the academic year 2009-2010 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Criminology offering a seminar series on Comparative Criminal Justice.

He has been a visiting professor in a number of different countries, including teaching courses on comparative criminal justice at Berkeley, NYU and Sydney. Most recently, in 2008, he was appointed 'Wiarda' visiting professor at The Willem Pompe Institute at Utrecht University, and in 2009 was elected the S.T. Lee Professorial fellow at London University's Institute of Advanced Studies. David is an academician of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and was a recipient of an American Sociological Association distinguished scholar award in 1985 and the American Criminology Society's Sellin-Glueck award in 2009.

Widely published, David's criminological work mainly focuses on white collar crime and comparative criminal justice (overlapping with sociology of law and comparative law).