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 the
quarterly Cahiers Politiestudies and the series Reeks Veiligheidsstudies (Gompel&Svacina).
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 on political violence.