Decision makers, practitioners, and renowned researchers among speakers at the CEPOL Research & Science Conference

Seven plenary sessions, fifteen parallel sessions, and over 100 speakers are on CEPOL’s 2024/2025 Research & Science Conference agenda. This edition, focusing on Tackling the world of High-Risk Criminal Networks (HRCN), will take place on 25-27 March 2025 at the premises of the Economic and Financial Police School of the Italian Guardia di Finanza. More than 300 participants will explore trends, challenges, and opportunities to disrupt organised crime.

Amongst key speakers are the Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs, Javier Zarzalejos, and Executive Director of CEPOL Montserrat Marin Lopez. In addition to the high-level discussions featuring EU lawmakers and experts from Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Agencies’ including eu-LISA, Eurojust, Europol and CEPOL, researchers and esteemed academics will discuss global challenges presented by the pervasive and evolving threat of organised crime.

During the plenary session moderated by Giuseppe Giliberti (the head of Cabinet at International Police Cooperation Service and National EMPACT Coordinator for Italy), Prof. Fernando Dalla Chiesa, the president of the Research Institute of the University of Milan dedicated to research and education in the field of organised crime who introduced the first academic course of sociology of organised crime in the Italian university will discuss threats posed by HRCN with EMPACT practitioners Luigi Mancuso from the Italian Ministry of Interior and Michael Will from Europol, as well as Pedro Seixas Felicio (EC Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs).

At the roundtable moderated by an expert in policymaking and fundamental rights Professor of Criminal Law Anabela Miranda Rodrigues, who was the first female Portuguese Minister of Internal Affairs, journalists who cover organised crime “La Repubblica’s” journalist and novelist Carlo Bonini, “Het Parool” journalist Wouter Laumans will discuss challenges of investigative journalism and justice with the Italian National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Chief Prosecutor Giovanni Melillo and Eurojust’s Anti-Trafficking Team Vice-Chair Camilla Braat.

The second day of the conference will be opened by the discussion moderated by Professor of Applied Artificial Intelligence John MacIntyre on the use of technologies in fighting HRCNs. Keynotes by criminology professors Letizia Paoli (Leuven Institute of Criminology), who publishes extensively on organised crime, illegal drugs, and related control policies, and Ernesto Ugo Savona (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan), an expert on organised, economic, and financial crime will be followed by a roundtable discussion of practitioners: Nada Milisavljevic (EC Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs), Ruth Linden (EU Innovation Lab, Europol), Javier Galbally (Senior Research Officer at eu-LISA) and Yannick Felici (EU Agency for the Space Programme).

Under the social impact theme of the conference, the plenary session “Witnesses and victims of HRCN” will close the day with Vesna Nikolić-Ristanović, a retired professor at Belgrade University; she received the World Society of Victimology 2018 Honorary Membership Award for her significant contribution to victimology, leading the discussion. She will be joined by Prof. Anna Sergi from the University of Essex, who has pioneered critical and cultural research on mafia mobility, primarily looking at the ’ndrangheta - the Calabrian mafia - abroad, and Monica Usai from Libera – Associazioni, nomi e numeri contro le mafie, an Italian association that promotes outreach activities against organised crime.

Best Practices will be shared in the “Opportunities and challenges dealing with HRCN” plenary session, moderated by Thierry Hartmann from the French Ministry of Interior. Keynote speakers include Guardia di Finanza’s Maj. Gen. Antonio Quintavalle Cecere (Head of the Central Investigation Service against Organised Crime - SCICO) who will share his operative experiences in fighting against economic and financial crime and mafia-type crime that he has gained as the chief of the operative units in Naples, Bari, Catania, and Palermo. An author and co-author of many publications on security-related topics Prof. Babak Akhgar, Director of CENTRIC (Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence, and Organised Crime Research) and Jean-Luc Lottefier (former EMPACT HRCN Driver in force to the Belgian Police) will join the panel, followed by the Q&A session.

The full agenda can be viewed on the conference website: CEPOL Research & Science Conference 2024/2025 | CEPOL