Paul Ponsaers (°13th of March 1952) graduated in Sociology and has a doctoral degree in Criminology. He started his scientific career as
assistant professor at the University of Leuven (KULeuven) of the late prof. dr. Lode Van Outrive. During this period he was especially engaged in research on terrorism. His doctoral thesis was on the labour inspectorate in Belgium.
Afterwards he started for a period of five years as journalist for the daily newspaper De Morgen, where he was mostly involved in research on extreme right-wing violence
and the so-called ‘gang of Nivelles’.
Later on he became departmental head of the Police Policy Support Unit. In the beginning
at the department of Interior, afterwards at the General Police Support Service for ten years. This is where he set up several broad research projects as the development of registered crime statistics and the security monitor.
Since 1998 to 2012, Paul was working at Ghent University, at the department of Penal Law and Criminology, where he set up the research unit on Urban Crime and Policing
(UCP). He was teaching ‘Police Sciences’, ‘Sociology of Law’ and ‘Methods and Techniques of Criminological Research’. Since 2012 he is emeritus professor and still member of the staff of the department at Ghent University.
Paul is today founding editor of het quarterly Cahiers Politiestudies and the series Reeks Politiestudies (Maklu).
He published an important number of articles and papers in national and international journals and books concerning p olicing, financial and economic
crime, crime analysis and security policy. For the moment he concentrates on the writing of a “Sociology of European Police”.