Marie Torstensson Levander

Marie Torstensson Levander (Ph.D. in Sociology, Docent, Stockholm University) is Senior Professor at the Department of Criminology, Malmö University, Sweden. She is the Principal Investigator of the longitudinal and comparative project MINDS (The Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study), funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR) and the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE). MINDS is modeled after the PADS+ project and comprises four waves of data collection, following 550 individuals from ages 12 to 19 and a community study among a random sample of 8000 citizens in Malmö conducted in 2012 and 2015. The project also includes the sub-studies Victimisation among Young People in the City of Malmö: Daily Routines and Consequences.  

She currently participates in the Swedish Research Council-funded project When Violence Becomes an Acceptable Action Alternative: An Analytic Criminology Approach to Advance Our Understanding of the Causes of Violent Crime and Its Prevention. This project is guided by an analytic criminology framework focused on mechanism-based explanations as applied in Situational Action Theory. Its specific hypotheses will be tested using data from three European prospective longitudinal studies conducted in Sweden, the UK, and Germany.

Professor Torstensson Levanders main research interests are the causes of crime, longitudinal studies, criminal careers, female offending, fear and victimisation of crime, police studies and crime prevention.