Steve Hall

Steve Hall is Professor of Criminology in the Social Futures Institute. He is an internationally leading criminological researcher and theorist. His book Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture (Willan 2008, with Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum) has been described as ‘an important landmark in criminology’ and his most recent book Theorizing Crime and Deviance (Sage 2012) has been lauded as ‘a remarkable intellectual achievement’ that ‘rocks the foundations of the discipline’.

In the 1970s Steve worked as a professional musician and general labourer, and in the 1980s he worked in the field of rehabilitation and youth offending.
After graduating from university in 1991 with first class honours in sociology, he worked as a lecturer at Teesside from 1993, a member of the team that established the country’s first single-honours criminology degree. After spells as a senior research fellow at the University of Durham and a researcher and teacher at Northumbria University, he re-joined Teesside in 2010.

New books: New Directions in Criminological Theory (Sage 2012, with Simon Winlow) and Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage, 2013, with Simon Winlow).

Research interests

Professor Hall has published widely in the fields of criminology, social theory, philosophy and history. His current research includes the establishment of firmer links between criminological theory, social theory and philosophy; criminality, subjectivity and consumer culture; comparative homicide rates; violence and the pacification of populations; and violence and masculinity in late modernity. Together with his long-time research and writing partner Simon Winlow, also Professor of Criminology at the Social Futures Institute, Professor Hall has established a global reputation in these fields.

In the past he has co-directed ESRC funded research on violence, policing and the night-time economy, which examined the relationship between private and public security in a lucrative sector of the leisure market that was experiencing rapid growth. He has also directed a number of independent and collaborative research projects on criminological theory; violence and masculinity; criminality and consumer culture; and urban riots, all of which are on-going.

At the moment he is researching and writing in the areas of social exclusion, social unrest, the ‘pseudo-pacification’ of populations and the importation of the latest philosophical thinking on subjectivity and ideology into the field of criminological theory.