ERC Starting Grant for Research into Cybercrime Pathways

Rutger Leukfeldt, senior researcher at the NSCR, director at the Centre of Expertise Cybersecurity (THUAS), and professor Governing Cybercrime Leiden University, received an ERC Starting Grant for his research proposal Cybercrime Pathways; The online-offline nexus in cybercrime: Examining online and offline pathways into and out of cybercrime.

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the awarding of 400 Starting Grants to young scientists and scholars across Europe. The grants - €628 million in total - support cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from medicine and physics to social sciences and humanities. This funding, part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, will help researchers to launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their best ideas.

Changing offline and online pathways in and out of cybercrime

The Cybercrime Pathways programme will be part of the combined research program of The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Leiden University and the NSCR. The project focuses on one of the major issues in criminology today: changing offline and online pathways in and out of cybercrime. Individuals do not become cybercriminals overnight. They tend to move through different stages, with each stage bringing them a little closer to crime involvement.

Rutger Leukfeldt: “The programme will go beyond the existing literature and utilize a mixed method design that combines much-needed explorative qualitative insights with quantitative field experiments. Using unique qualitative data - a combination of interviews with criminal and ethical hackers, and police data - mechanisms will be distilled and experimented in studies with rigorous experimental designs.”

  

Click here to read an interview with Rutger Leukfeldt on how to prevent curious youngsters from becoming cybercriminals.