Dr Chris Greer
Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology
Department of Sociology
Email: Chris.Greer.1@city.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7040 4570
Office hours: On sabbatical Spring Term 2012
Administration: Undergraduate Programme Director; Undergraduate Admissions Tutor
Overview and research interests
Dr Chris Greer has been at City University London since 2005, having worked at Northumbria University since 2002. He completed his PhD in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Queen's University Belfast in 2001. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of media criminology, critical victimology, punishment and social control, and criminological theory. Dr Greer would be interested in supervising PhDs in any of these areas, and welcomes informal enquiries from potential doctoral students.
Currently, Dr Greer is researching the shifting relations between news journalism, institutional power (particularly within the criminal justice system) and civil society in a context of media proliferation, declining deference to authority and a rapidly transforming information-communications marketplace. Recent publications have examined the impact of citizen journalism on public order policing, the rise of 'trial by media' and 'media justice', and the press commodification of institutional failure and scandal as a means of economic survival. He is working on a monograph called Crime News, for Routledge.
Dr Greer is founding and current co-editor (with Mark Hamm) of Crime Media Culture: An International Journal (CMC), which promotes a cross-disciplinary understanding of the crime, media, culture nexus. CMC is now included in the Criminology and Penology rankings: 2011 Impact Factor 0.73. He is also an International Advisory Board member of Theoretical Criminology.
He has presented his research at a range of international venues, and been a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney (2005), and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, New York (2008).
Teaching
Undergraduate: Introduction to Criminology; Key Issues in Criminology; Violence and Criminal Justice Policy; Sociology of Punishment; Media, Crime and Criminal Justice; Victimology
Postgraduate: Contemporary Criminology; Crime News; Crime and Justice: Policy and Practice
Research and publications
Journal editorships
Founding and Current Co-Editor, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, London: Sage (now included in the Thomson Reuters Social Science Citation Index - 2011 Impact Factor 0.73 http://cmc.sagepub.com/).
Books
- Greer, C. (forthcoming) Crime News, London: Routledge.
- Davies, P., Francis, P., Greer, C. (eds.) (forthcoming) Victims, Crime and Society, second edition, London: Sage.
- Greer, C. (ed.) (2009) Crime and Media: A Reader, London: Routledge
- Davies, P., Francis, P. and Greer, C. (eds.) (2007) Victims, Crime and Society, London: Sage
- Greer, C. (2003) Sex Crime and the Media: Sex Offending and the Press in a Divided Society, Cullompton: Willan
Recent refereed journal articles
- Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2012) 'This is not Justice: Ian Tomlinson, Institutional Failure and the Press Politics of Outrage', in British Journal of Criminology, 52, 6: 274-293.
- Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2011) 'Trial by Media: Policing, the 24-7 News Mediasphere, and the Politics of Outrage', Theoretical Criminology, 15, 1: 23-46.
- Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2010) 'We Predict a Riot: Public Order Policing, News Coverage and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist', in British Journal of Criminology, 50, 6: 1041-1059.
- Hamm, M., Ferrell, J. and Greer, C. (2010) 'Provocateur for Justice: Notes on the Imprisonment of Luis Barrios', in Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 6, 2: 227-238.
Recent chapters in edited collections
- Greer, C. and Reiner, R. (in press) 'Mediated Mayhem: Media, Crime and Criminal Justice', in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Criminology, fifth edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2010) 'Prevemos um Motim: O Policiamento da Ordem Pública, os Novos Ambientes Mediáticos e a Emergência do Cidadão-Jornalista', in Machado, H. e Santos, F. (eds.) Justiça, Media e Cidadania, Almedina: Coimbra (Portuguese translation of 'We Predict a Riot: British Journal of Criminology, 2010).
- Greer, C. (2010) 'News Media Criminology' in E. McLaughlin and T. Newburn (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Criminological Theory, London: Sage.
- Greer, C. (2009) 'Crime and Media: Understanding the Connections' in C. Hale, K. Hayward, A. Wahadin and E. Wincup (eds.) Criminology, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Greer, C. (2007) 'News Media, Victims and Crime', in P. Davies, P. Francis and C. Greer (eds.) Victims, Crime and Society, London: Sage.
- Davies, P., Francis, P. and Greer, C. (2007) 'Victims, Crime and Society', in P. Davies, P. Francis, C. Greer (eds.) Victims, Crime and Society, London: Sage, p1-19.
Recent media contributions
- Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2011) 'Anders Behring Breivik Reconstruction: Making a Killer look Cool', Guardian, Comment is Free, August 17th 2011 -
- Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2011) 'The Ian Tomlinson Inquest was Justice seen to be Done', Guardian, Comment is Free, May 3rd 2011 -
- Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2011) 'The Camera Never Lies: Documenting G20', Foreword in Price, G. The Visual Documentation of G20, self-published photography book
Recent invited national and international research presentations
- November 2010 - This is not Justice! Institutional Failure and the News Media 'Politics of Outrage', Department of Sociology Seminar Series, University of Essex, UK
- November 2010 (with Eugene McLaughlin) - We Predict a Riot: Public Order Policing, News Coverage and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist, Department of Sociology Seminar Series, University of Brunel, UK
- October 2010 - We Predict a Riot: Public Order Policing, New Media Environments and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist, International Seminar on Justice, Media and Citizenship, University of Coimbra, Lisbon, Portugal
- March 2010 - Legitimacy Crisis: The News Media Humiliation of Sir Ian Blair, University of Southampton Sociology Seminar Series
- February 2010 (with Eugene McLaughlin) - De-Legitimizing the Commissioner: The Role of the News Media in the Resignation of Sir Ian Blair, All Souls Criminology Seminar Series, University of Oxford
- January 2010 - invited participant in Reinventing Penal Parsimony Workshop, All Souls College, University of Oxford
- November 2009 (with Eugene McLaughlin) - Legitimacy Crisis: The News Media Humiliation of Sir Ian Blair, British Society of Criminology Research Seminar Series, Mannheim Centre, London School of Economics
- April, 2009 - Media, Immigration and Criminal Justice in the Bulimic Society, Between the Dream and the Nightmare conference, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the City University of New York, USA
- December, 2008 - Reporting Murder in the Global Mediasphere, Texas Christian University, Texas, USA
- September, 2008 - Reporting Murder in the Global Mediasphere, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the City University of New York, USA
- June, 2008 - Finding Madeleine: British Media Coverage of the Madeleine McCann Case, Opening Plenary address, Media and Fear of Crime conference, Lisbon, Portugal
- March 2008 - Reporting Murder, Crime, Culture and Conflict: International Perspectives conference, London South Bank University
Recent conference presentations
- November 2011 - Toward a Standard Analytical Framework for the Study of Mass-Mediated Crime and Terrorism (invited Round Table participant), American Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Washington DC, USA
- July 2010 - We Predict a Riot? Public Order Policing, New Media Environments and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist, British Society of Criminology conference, Leicester, UK
- April 2010 - We Predict a Riot? Public Order Policing, New Media Environments and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist, A Global Surveillance Society? conference, City University London, UK
- November 2009 (with Carrie-Anne Myers) - School Bullying in a Multi-Mediated Society: Cyberbullying as a Distinct Social Phenomenon?, American Society of Criminology Annual Conference, Philadelphia, USA
- July 2009 (with Eugene McLaughlin) - Plod Off: The News Media Humiliation of Sir Ian Blair, British Society of Criminology Conference, Cardiff, UK
PhD supervision
Current PhD students
- Gemma Anslow (continuing) - Media, Politics and Penal Reform: A Case Study of Pressure Groups Working on Women's Imprisonment
- John Kerr (continuing) - The Securitization and Theft of Art in London
- Dimitris Akrivos (continuing) - Framing Internet Suicide: Media Influences and Public Understandings of Cyber-deviance in Bridgend
- David Pichonnaz (continuing - visiting from Fribourg, Switzerland, 2011-12) - The Reforms of Police Perceptions of Youth Crime and Young Offenders Through Occupational Socialisation
- Luis Perez-Neto (PhD awarded February 2011 - visited from University of Barcelona, Spain, 2009-10) - Public Opinion and Criminal Policy-Making: Penal Populism in Spain, 2000-2004
- Brooke Van Dam (PhD awarded September 2010) - The Distinctive Nature of Making News Online: A Comparison of How latimes.com and salon.com covered the 2008 US Presidential Elections
Dr Greer would be interested in supervising PhDs in any of his specialist areas (media criminology, critical victimology, punishment and social control, and criminological theory) and welcomes informal enquiries from potential doctoral students.