Computer Laboratory

Ben Collier

About me

I am a postdoc researcher working in the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre, an interdisciplinary centre which combines expertise from computer science, criminology and law.

Before coming to criminology, I completed an MChem in Chemistry and worked as a statistician for the Scottish Government, mainly focused on Scottish transport policy. I have had a long-standing research interest in cybercrime, and went on to complete an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Edinburgh.

I recently submitted a PhD in Criminology at the Univerity of Edinburgh. My PhD applies frameworks from Science and Technology Studies and criminology to the study of the Tor Project and the Tor community. In particular, I use a "social worlds" approach to look at how different understandings of Tor within the community shape it in different ways, how these different perspectives come together to provide a shared sense of Tor as socially meaningful, how they shape its is design, how it intersects with processes of criminalisation and labelling, and its mechanisms of resilience and resistance.

My work at the Centre focuses on online communities involved in cybercrime, analysing and managing a variety of data sources including scraped data from CrimeBB, our large repository of data collected from hacker forums. I have a particular interest in mechanisms of resilience and collective efficacy within these communities, and how these relate to cultural forms and the features of the platforms they use.