Dr Evelyn Svingen SFHEA

• PGCert in Higher Education (distinction), University of Birmingham, February 2025
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), Advance HE, June 2024
• PhD in Criminology, University of Cambridge, July 2022
• MPhil in Criminological Research (distinction), University of Cambridge, October 2017
• BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences (cum laude), University College Maastricht, July 2016

Evelyn Svingen received her BA (cum laude) in Liberal Arts and Sciences from University College Maastricht in the Netherlands, where she combined neuroscience with political philosophy, among other interests. She then went to the University of Cambridge as a Cambridge International Scholar, taking an MPhil (distinction) in Criminological Research before completing her PhD in Criminology at the Institute of Criminology. Her doctoral research developed and tested the Retribution and Reciprocity Model, drawing together neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology and game theory.

At Cambridge, she taught on the Learning Together project at HMP Grendon alongside a range of undergraduate and master’s teaching, and she designed and led a summer course in Forensic Psychology at Pembroke College. After her PhD, she joined the Research division of Cambridge University Press and Assessment, working on educational assessment, the digital divide, and questions of equality and diversity.

She joined the University of Birmingham in September 2022 as Assistant Professor in Criminology. Her first monograph, Evolutionary Criminology and Cooperation: Retribution, Reciprocity, and Crime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), presents the Retribution and Reciprocity Model as the first evolutionary theory of crime and won the 2024 European Society of Criminology Book Award.

From September 2023 to August 2026 she was Academic Lead in Social Sciences for the Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences programme, and she remains committed to interdisciplinary education as Programme Director of the BASc in Social Sciences.

• LC Causes of Crime (module lead)
• LC Global Challenges: Introducing Social Sciences I and II (module lead)
• LM Advanced Criminological Theory (module lead)

Evelyn welcomes applications from prospective doctoral students working on the causes of crime, particularly where the project has an explanatory or mechanism-based ambition or a biosocial background.

Areas of interest include:

- Theories of crime and theoretical integration
- Evolutionary and biosocial criminology
- Adolescent development, risk-taking and youth justice
- Cybercrime and cyberviolence
- Police legitimacy, trust and institutional responses to offending
- Quantitative, experimental and behavioural methods, including mathematical and agent-based modelling

She currently supervises doctoral projects on adolescent cyberviolence and on deepfake extortion in the metaverse, and has previously supervised work applying the Retribution and Reciprocity Model to online harm.

The Retribution and Reciprocity Model

Evelyn’s central research programme develops the Retribution and Reciprocity Model, an evolutionary account that explains offending through the cooperative mechanisms of positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity and retribution, combined with an individual’s perception of their environment. The model was introduced in ‘A case for evolutionary criminology: introducing the retribution and reciprocity model’ (Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, 2023) and set out in full in Evolutionary Criminology and Cooperation: Retribution, Reciprocity, and Crime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), which won the 2024 European Society of Criminology Book Award. Related work has examined the neurophysiological basis of the model and a developmental extension.

Adolescent development and youth justice

Evelyn works on what developmental neuroscience can and cannot offer youth justice. With Heng Choon (Oliver) Chan she edited Youth Deviance, Crime, and Justice: The Neuro-Psycho-Criminological Perspective (Wiley, 2025), contributing chapters on the neuropsychology of retaliation and, with Laura Kelly, on the age–crime curve. A developmental version of the Retribution and Reciprocity Model, setting out its implications for youth justice, appeared in Behavioral Sciences & the Law (2026), as did a national population-based study of adolescent cyberviolence in South Korea with Oliver Chan and Hong-Jun Park.

Criminological theory and the future of the discipline

Evelyn writes on the epistemology of criminological enquiry and the conditions for theoretical progress in the field. ‘Evolutionary criminology and the future of theory’ (Papers from the British Criminology Conference, 2025) argues that criminology’s multidisciplinary character is a foundation for building causal explanations rather than an obstacle to them.

Interdisciplinary education

Evelyn researches how interdisciplinary programmes develop students’ capacity for critical thinking and integrative reasoning. ‘Developing critical thinking through the lens of interdisciplinarity: a case study of a Criminological Theory module’, with Egle Tsirova and Ulviyya Khalilova, appeared in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Nature Portfolio, 2026). She is also co-editing Lessons from LANS (Palgrave Macmillan), a volume documenting the Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences programme at Birmingham and what it shows about designing and sustaining interdisciplinary degrees.