Professor Richard Hobbs

Biography

Dick Hobbs came to academic work late having worked as an office boy, labourer, dustman and schoolteacher. He trained as a sociologist at the LSE and the University of Surrey before working at the Universities of Oxford and Durham, where he held Chairs in both Sociology and Law. He was Professor of Sociology at the LSE (2005-2011) before taking a post in the Sociology Department at Essex University (2011-2014), where he was Professor of Sociology and Director of the Criminology Centre. Dick Hobbs is an urban ethnographer specialising in the sociology of London, organised and professional crime, the night-time economy, violence, drug markets and research methodology. He has received grants, primarily from the ESRC, as well as from the Home Office, the Nuffield Trust and the EU. He has conducted a wide range of consultancies for government agencies and the mass media, and  presented evidence to the UK government on the night-time economy, and to a Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Australian drug markets. He is editor of the Routledge Advances in Ethnography series.  The common thread that runs through this work is a commitment to sociological studies of urban life which emphasise the  role of the glocal political economy in shaping deviant cultures. rently working on a number of publications emerging from an ESRC funded study of the impact of the 2012 Olympics on the policing of a London borough. I am currently emeritus Professor at Essex, Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Sydney, and Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Honours - 1989  Philip Abrams Prize: Awarded by the British Sociological Association for  the best book published by a new author.Doing the Business: Entrepreneurship, the Working Class and Detectives in the East End of London, Oxford University Press, (1988 - 2003  Radzinowicz Prize: Awarded by the British Journal of Criminology.  Door Lore (BJC 2002).                                           - 2007  Life Changer Award:  Awarded by the University and Colleges Union “Changing People's Lives Through Education”.      - 2013  Outstanding Publication Award: International Association for the Study  of Organised Crime. Lush Life: Constructing Organised Crime in the UK.Oxford University Press, (2013) - 2015 Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology University of Essex. - 2015 Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)       - 2016 Outstanding Achievement Award, British Society of Criminology   - 2016 Honorary Member, British Society of Criminology

Qualifications

• B.Ed Lancaster,

• MSc Sociology London School of Economics,

• PhD University of Surrey,