Dr Piotr Godzisz

Piotr Godzisz is Co-Director of the Centre for Hate Studies and an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy. Piotr specialises in researching hate crime victimisation and developing policy responses, focusing particularly on comparative and international contexts. Prior to his role at Leicester, he spent two years as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Atelier Genre(s) et Sexualité(s) at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and taught at universities in the UK and Poland. His work has contributed to policy, research, advocacy, and training activities across Europe, including in collaboration with organisations such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the United Nations. Piotr holds a PhD from University College London and an MA in Political Science from the University of Warsaw. His first book, State Responses to Anti-LGBT Violence: Poland in a European Context was published by Palgrave.

Piotr's research focuses on the intersection of hate crime and human rights, particularly in the context of providing access to justice for victims of bias-motivated violence and hate speech. Currently, he is engaged in research concerning the internationalisation of the hate crime concept and the global dissemination of hate crime policies.

His notable past projects include:

• Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship for a project on the Europeanisation of hate crime policies in South-East and Eastern Europe (Universite libre de Bruxelles, funded by Horizon).

• Principal Investigator (PI) of the collaborative, transnational project "Call It Hate" on attitudes towards victims of anti-LGBT hate crimes in Europe (Lambda Warsaw, funded by the European Union Rights, Equality, and Citizenship programme).

• PI of the collaborative, transnational project "Come Forward" on access to justice for victims of anti-LGBT hate crime in Europe (Lambda Warsaw, funded by the European Union Rights, Equality, and Citizenship programme).

• PhD study on state responses to anti-LGBT hate crime in Poland (University College London, School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, fully funded by the Bonnart-Braunthal Trust UCL Endowment, 2013-2017).

Piotr is currently supervising PhD students working on:

• hate crime framing strategies (Suphanut Sukkasem)
• hate crime targeting homeless people (Emily Wertans)
• targeted hostility in rural Italy (Samuele D'Auria)
• hate crimes against Turkish-language communities in Leicester (Didem Karaer).

Piotr welcomes PhD and post-doctoral project supervision enquiries in areas related to his area of expertise, including in hate crime, hate speech, human rights, discrimination, equality, access to justice, LGBTI issues, racism, anti-gender mobilisation, gendered disinformation, Europeanisation, and nationalism. Inquiries from students interested in pursuing interdisciplinary research are particularly welcome.

He is keen to support students and early-career academics in pursuit of research funding, including from the ESRC and MSCA.

Piotr has designed and delivered multi-modal teaching on various Criminology, Sociology, Law, and Political Sciences modules in Poland, Belgium, and the UK. He has also designed and conducted continued professional training for police, prosecutors, judges, and civil society activists focused on hate crime, hate speech, equality, access to justice, and victim rights.

Currently, he is the module leader for the undergraduate Criminology module "Hate Crime" and the postgraduate Criminology module "Victimology" at the University of Leicester. He is also a tutor on the online course "Fair Policing and Hate Crime" delivered by the Facing Facts Network.

PG Cert Specialist Role in Education (Birmingham City University)

PhD Criminology (University College London)

MA Political Science (University of Warsaw)