This free course, Critical criminology and the social sciences, will provide you with an insight into some of the main disciplines within the social sciences, focusing in particular on critical criminology. It will begin by outlining some of the defining characteristics of the social science disciplines of psychology, law, sociology and critical criminology. Using the global financial crisis of 2007-8 as a case study, the course will then provide you with an insight into how academics working in some of these different disciplinary backgrounds make sense of a similar topic in different ways. The course will conclude by considering the place of critical criminology within the social sciences.

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• outline the scope and nature of some of the key disciplines in the social sciences
• identify the core features of critical criminology
• explain how aspects of the social world might be explored from different disciplinary perspectives
• understand how critical criminology relates to other social sciences.