Technology and IC Research

One of the challenges I face as a junior researcher specializing in international crime (IC) research is connecting with like-minded researchers, who are often spread out across the world.  Professional meetings are valuable for networking and collaborating, but there are time and financial constraints to frequent and consistent participation in a large number of such conferences.

Given this situation, I wonder to what extent can we leverage technology to “flatten” out research community and improve communication and collaboration?  Three simple ideas come to my mind:

1.)  Blogs, like this one, can be used to communicate frequently and casually about a range of topics — from small things like announcing upcoming events or discussing new literature, to more serious endeavors such as soliciting feedback on works in progress or identifying potential collaborators.  I’ve seen many successful examples of such blogs in other fields, but I haven’t participated in one geared toward an international community like ours.  Aside from the language barrier, are there other limitations to using blogs for this purpose?*

2.)  Wikis are shared websites that allow collaborators to organize projects, share information and ideas, and share files in a central location that is accessible anywhere there is an Internet connection.  I use them frequently for projects with graduate students, but I haven’t used them yet for international collaborations.

3.)  Web conferencing is an ideal way to faciliatate face-to-face communication.  While this is a great idea in practice, I don’t know of many researchers, including U.S. researchers, who actually use this technology for collaborating.

I’m curious to hear of success stories of international research collaborations using these technologies.  Additionally, I’d like to learn about other ways in which we can better leverage technology for international crime research.

*One of the reasons why I chose WordPress for this blog is because it does offer a number of language options.  The primary language of the blog is English, but I believe it does allow users to write posts and comment in other languages as well.  I don’t have much experience with this option yet, but we can learn more about how it works as this blog develops.

Welcome

Hopefully you have come across this blog because you are a researcher, practitioner, or student interested in international crime and justice issues, broadly defined.  This blog was created to facilitate dialogue about research in the areas of international, comparative, and transnational criminology and criminal justice.  Since professionals working in these areas are located across the globe, this blog is an opportunity to create a virtual community to meet other professionals working in similar areas, build collaborations, discuss current trends in the field, and share recent research results and works in progress.

This is certainly a work-in-progress and the success of this project depends largely upon the active participation of our community.  See the About page for more information about how you can participate and our Contributors page to learn more about the current authors of this blog.