Dr Luca Giommoni

Senior Lecturer

: giommonil@cardiff.ac.uk
: +44 (0)29 2087 4436
: 2.13, Glamorgan Building

: Available for postgraduate supervision

I am a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University.

My work specialises in drug markets and any other form of illicit trafficking (e.g. human trafficking). In particular, I’m interested in the quantitative analysis of factors influencing international trafficking and online illicit markets.

My work on drug markets, organised crime and cryptomarkets has appeared in the International Journal of Drug Policy, Crime and Justice, European Journal of Criminology, British Journal of Criminology, Deviant Behavior, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Social Networks, Crime, Law and Social Change, etc.

I also collaborate with the Social Data Science Lab and the Hate Lab in the analysis of online communities and the application of social network analysis to social media data.

Prior to the current appointment I was a PhD candidate at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan and a researcher at Trasncrime (2011-2015). From August 2013 to Febraury 2014, I was a visiting scholar at University of Maryland, College Park (MD), where I collaborated with Professor Peter Reuter.

I welcome proposals from prospective Ph.D. students with an interest in illicit markets, human trafficking, organised crime and online illicit trafficking.

Employment

2019 - present: Senio Lecturer, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

2015 - 2019: Lecturer, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

2011 - 2015: Researcher at Transcrime

Education

2011 - 2015: PhD. (Criminology), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy.

2013 - 2014: Visiting Scholar, University of Maryland (MD), USA.

2009 - 2011: MSc (Applied Social Sciences), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy.

Professional memberships

American Society of Criminology,
European Society of Criminology,
International Society for the Study of Drug Policy

Speaking engagements

Aziani, Berlusconi and Giommoni "Comparing the determinants of heroin and cocaine flows to Europe using a latent space model" Illicit Networks Workshop, London, UK, 7-8 December 2016.

Giommoni “Crowdsourcing Intelligence Data: An Analysis of the British Cannabis Market” National Open Source Intelligence and Investigations Conference, Hinckley Island Hotel, Leicestershire, 4 – 6 October 2016

Giommoni “Scraping the Price of Weed: An Analysis of Cannabis Price Using Open Sources”, 71st Annual conference of the American Society of Criminology, Washington, DC , 18 – 21 November 2015

Giommoni “As Above so Below: A Social Network Analysis of the Supply of Heroin to Europe” presented at 15th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, Oporto, 2 - 5 September 2015

Décary-Hétu and Giommoni “Operation Onymous and tangible effects: displacement in the dark net drug markets” presented at 9th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, Ghent, 20 – 22 May 2015

Giommoni, Aziani and Berlusconi “Not All Roads Lead to Rome: A Social Network Analysis of the Opiate Trafficking along the Balkan Route” presented at 9th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, Ghent, 20 – 22 May 2015

Giommoni, Luca “Explaining the decline of heroin and cocaine price in the European countries: an empirical approach” presented at 70th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, 19th - 22rd November 2014, San Francisco, USA

Reuter Peter, Beau Kilmer and Luca Giommoni “What can be learned from cross-national comparisons of data on illegal drugs?” presented at 8th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, Rome, 21 – 23 May 2014

2022

Bergeron, A.et al. 2022. The success rate of online illicit drug transactions during a global pandemic. International Journal of Drug Policy 99, article number: 103452. (10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103452)

2021

Alorainy, W.et al. 2021. Disrupting networks of hate: Characterising hateful networks and removing critical nodes. Social Network Analysis and Mining
Giommoni, L. and Ikwu, R. 2021. Identifying human trafcking indicators in the UK online sex market. Trends in Organized Crime (10.1007/s12117-021-09431-0)
Giommoni, L., Berlusconi, G. and Aziani, A. 2021. Interdicting international drug trafficking: a network approach for coordinated and targeted interventions. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (10.1007/s10610-020-09473-0)
Aziani, A., Berlusconi, G. and Giommoni, L. 2021. A quantitative application of enterprise and social embeddedness theories to the transnational trafficking of cocaine in Europe. Deviant Behavior 42(2) (10.1080/01639625.2019.1666606)
Giommoni, L., Berlusconi, G. and Melendez-Torres, G. J. 2021. Characterising the structure of the largest online commercial sex network in the UK: observational study with implications for STI prevention. Culture, Health and Sexuality 23(12), pp. 1608-1625. (10.1080/13691058.2020.1788725)

2020

Giommoni, L. 2020. Why we should all be more careful in drawing conclusions about how COVID-19 is changing drug markets. International Journal of Drug Policy 83, article number: 102834. (10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102834)
Bergeron, A., Décary-Hétu, D. and Giommoni, L. 2020. Preliminary findings of the impact of COVID-19 on drugs crypto markets. International Journal of Drug Policy 83, article number: 102870. (10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102870)
Giommoni, L., Gundur, R. and Cheekes, E. 2020. International drug trafficking: past, present, and prospective trends. In: Oxford Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Oxford Research Encyclopedia Oxford University Press (OUP), (10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.470)

2018

Giommoni, L. and Gundur, R. 2018. An analysis of the United Kingdom’s cannabis market using crowdsourced data. Global Crime 19(2), pp. 85-106. (10.1080/17440572.2018.1460071)

2017

Giommoni, L., Reuter, P. and Kilmer, B. 2017. Exploring the perils of cross national comparisons of drug prevalence: the effect of survey modality. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 181, pp. 194-199. (10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2017.09.027)
Berlusconi, G., Aziani, A. and Giommoni, L. 2017. The determinants of heroin flows in Europe: a latent space approach. Social Networks 51, pp. 104-117. (10.1016/j.socnet.2017.03.012)
Giommoni, L., Aziani, A. and Berlusconi, G. 2017. How do illicit drugs move across countries? A network analysis of the heroin supply to Europe. Journal of Drug Issues 47(2), pp. 217-240. (10.1177/0022042616682426)
Décary-Hétu, D. and Giommoni, L. 2017. Do police crackdowns disrupt drug cryptomarkets? a longitudinal analysis of the effects of Operation Onymous. Crime, Law and Social Change 67(1), pp. 55-75. (10.1007/s10611-016-9644-4)

2016

Calderoni, F.et al. 2016. The Italian mafias in the world: a systematic assessment of the mobility of criminal groups. European Journal of Criminology 13(4), pp. 413-433. (10.1177/1477370815623570)
Giommoni, L. 2016. Illicit drugs market. In: Savona, E. and Riccardi, M. eds. From Illegal Markets to Legitimate Businesses: The Portfolio of Organised Crime in Europe. Transcrime, pp. 43-56.

2015

Dugato, M., Favarin, S. and Giommoni, L. 2015. The risks and rewards of organized crime investments in real estate. British Journal of Criminology 55(5), pp. 944-965. (10.1093/bjc/azv002)
Kilmer, B., Reuter, P. and Giommoni, L. 2015. What can be learned from cross-national comparisons of data on illegal drugs?. Crime and Justice 44(1), pp. 227-296. (10.1086/681552)
Savona, E. U., Giommoni, L. and Mancuso, M. 2015. Human trafficking for sexual exploitation in Italy. In: Leclerc, B. and Wortley, R. eds. Cognition and Crime. Offender Decision Making and Script Analyse. Crime Science Series London: Routledge, pp. 140-163.
Angelini, M.et al. 2015. Organised crime portfolio: illicit revenues and criminal investments in Europe. European Police Science and Research Bulletin 12, pp. 4-12.
Giommoni, L. 2015. From the generation of illicit proceeds to investments in the legal economy. In: Savona, E. U. and Riccardi, M. eds. From Illegal Markets to Legitimate Businesses: The Portfolio of Organised Crime in Europe. Transcrime, pp. 144-148.

2014

Giommoni, L. 2014. The retail value of the illicit drug market in Italy: a consumption-based approach. Global Crime 15(1-2), pp. 27-50. (10.1080/17440572.2013.875893)

2013

Giommoni, L. 2013. Caulkins Jonathan P., Hawken Angela, Kilmer Beau and Kleiman Mark A. R. 'Marijuana legalization: what everyone needs to know' [Book Review]. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 19(4), pp. 419-421. (10.1007/s10610-013-9217-3)

Undergraduate Teaching

Offending and Victimisation (Yr 2)
Drugs, Crime and Society (Yr 3)

Postgraduate Teaching

Researching Crime, Safety and Justice

Social Data Science Lab, ESRC, £1.5M (CoI)

Illicit financial flows and illegal markets estimates, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, USD 5,842, (PI)

How Online Technologies are Transforming Transnational Organised Crime (Cyber-TNOC), ESRC PaCCS, £449,957 (CoI)

Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, National Cyber Security Centre, £81,965. (CoI)

HateLab (Centre for Cyberhate Research & Policy), ESRC, £1.8M (CoI)

A World of Trouble: Managing Terrorist and Major Violent Crime Using Open Source Communication Analytics and Research. ESRC GCRF, £7,000 (CoI).

Crowdsourcing crime-related data: A pilot study on the use of crowdsourcing for collecting data on illicit drug markets. Cardiff University Crime and Security Research Institute, £6,500 (PI).

I welcome proposals from prospective Ph.D. students with an interest in illicit markets, human trafficking, organised crime and online illicit trafficking.

Past projects

Current PhD supervision:

Erik Cheeks - Illicit Drug Trafficking Flows

Dasni Noragal - Money Laundering in Sri Lanka