Advisory board
Federico Varese is Professor of Sociology (Professeur des Universités) in the Centre d’études européennes et de politique comparée (Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics), affiliated to the Department of Sociology, Oxford University, a Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and the Director of the Extra-legal Institute. Between 2021 and 2023, he was Director of the Department of Sociology at Oxford University.
His main area of research is the study of organised crime. He has written on the Russian mafia, Soviet criminal history, migration of mafia groups, Somali piracy, the dynamics of altruistic behaviour, and the application of Social Network Analysis to criminology. Currently, he is involved in research projects on the governance dimension of organised gangs in the UK, cybercrime markets, the Russian mafia and substandard medicines. He holds an Advanced ERC Grant, titled CRIMGOV, held at Sciences Po and Oxford University, for the period 2022-2026.
He is the author of four monographs – The Russian Mafia (OUP, 2001), Mafias on the Move (PUP, 2011), Mafia Life (2018), La Russia in quattro criminali (2022), and an edited collected, Organized Crime(Routledge, 2010). His books have been translated into eight different languages.
His website: https://federicovarese.com