Jeff Ferrell

Jeff Ferrell is an American criminologist and a leading figure in the field of Cultural Criminology. He is Professor of Sociology at Texas Christian University and Visiting Professor at the University of Kent. Ferrell’s work examines the intersections of culture, crime, and control, often through ethnographic and participatory research. He is known for immersing himself in subcultural worlds, from graffiti writers to urban anarchists, in order to document the lived experience of deviance, resistance, and criminalization.

Ferrell is a co-founder of Cultural Criminology, a perspective that emphasizes the role of meaning, representation, and emotion in the understanding of crime and crime control. His work challenges rationalist and purely structural explanations by highlighting the expressive and aesthetic dimensions of deviant behavior. Ferrell has been influential in linking criminology to media studies, urban studies, and subcultural theory, demonstrating how crime and control are shaped by symbolic processes and cultural conflicts.