معرفی
Dr. Damian Zaitch is an Associate Professor at the Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, School of Law, Utrecht University. He has been with Utrecht University since 2009, having previously taught at the Department of Criminology at Erasmus University Rotterdam from 2000 to 2009. His academic work spans three interconnected research domains: illegal drug trafficking and policies, cross-border organized and corporate crime, and green criminology.
Zaitch's research interests include Corporate Crime, Drug Trafficking and Policies, Organized Crime, Latin America, and Environmental Criminology. His methodological expertise lies in qualitative research methods, particularly virtual ethnography and visual criminology. He has conducted extensive fieldwork on drug trafficking through the port of Rotterdam, synthetic drug markets in Amsterdam, and alternative drug policies in Latin America, with a focus on harm reduction approaches.
His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on green criminology, particularly examining environmental crimes related to resource extraction in Latin America, as well as continuing work on transnational organized crime networks. His research often examines the intersection of state and corporate power in creating environmental harms and human rights violations.
- Willem Nagel Prize (2003) for his PhD research
- Founding and board member of CIROC (Center for Information and Research on Organized Crime)
- Coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Doctorate in Cultural and Global Criminology
- Coordinator of the Utrecht PhD Summer School on Advanced Qualitative and Legal Methods in Criminology
Zaitch teaches courses including International Organized Crime, Crimes of the Powerful, and Green Criminology at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He co-supervises numerous PhD projects on topics ranging from Nigerian cocaine trafficking networks to environmental rights violations by multinational corporations. His research is conducted within Utrecht University's strategic themes of Institutions for Open Societies and Pathways to Sustainability.
