Professor of Criminology, Oxford University Richard Ericson, Principal of Green College and Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of British Columbia, Canada, since 1993, has been appointed to the new Professorship of Criminology with effect from 1 January 2004. He will be a Fellow of All Souls College. He succeeds Professor Roger Hood as Director of the Centre for Criminological Research, who held the Readership in Criminology since 1973. The Centre for Criminological Research, established in 1966 as a small Penal Research Unit, is part of the Faculty of Law and includes three University Lecturerships as well as 18 contract researchers and support staff. A new University Readership in Criminology has been approved beginning in the 2004/05 academical year. A number of distinguished scholars are cross-appointed to the Centre for Criminological Research and teach on the new M.Sc. in Criminal Justice course.  Professor Ericsonís research interests span a wide area of expertise, including policing; socio-legal theory; the sociology of risk; insurance and regulation; and mass media and crime, law and justice. Professor Ericson was educated at the Universities of Guelph and Toronto, Canada, and the University of Cambridge. The majority of his career to date has been at the University of Toronto, where he started in 1974 as Assistant Professor of Criminology and Sociology, was later appointed Professor in 1982, and became Director of the Centre of Criminology in 1992. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Professor Ericson has held visiting professor- and fellowships at universities in Europe and overseas, including Paris X, Arizona State, Sydney, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Oxford. Professor Ericson said: “As part of the new Centre for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Criminology at Oxford has an opportunity to significantly broaden and strengthen its interdisciplinary contributions to the social sciences. Oxford is in a unique position to be the leading centre for advanced research and teaching in criminology internationally.”