Dr Giovanni Travaglino (Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London) has been awarded €1,499,818.00 by the European Research Council to undertake a project titled Legitimization of Criminal Governance: Group Comparisons and Within-Individual Dynamics (SecretPower_ERC).

The project, funded under the “Horizon Europe” programme, will investigate how criminal groups can exert political power over communities in democratic societies.

The project will break disciplinary boundaries and draw on social psychology, criminology, and political science to empirically test how ideologies, values, and social identities can allow criminal groups to justify their authority within the population, obtaining consensus and eliciting cooperation.

The grant will enable Dr Giovanni Travaglino to form a new research team, which will use multiple methodologies and approaches to examine these phenomena in three different societies: Italy, the UK and Japan. The team will conduct extensive population studies and study adolescents’ legal socialization in risky contexts.

The project will lead to a new understanding of how political power and authority are exerted outside institutional channels. It will foster theoretical development across various disciplines and establish solid empirical evidence to influence educative and law enforcement practices.

For future updates about the project, please follow @SecretPower_ERC on Twitter.