Jonathan Lusthaus

Profile

Dr Jonathan Lusthaus is Director of The Human Cybercriminal Project and an Associate Professor in Global Sociology in the Department of Sociology (a joint appointment held with the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies). He is also a Governing Body Member of St Antony's College.

Jonathan’s research focuses on the "human" side of profit-driven cybercrime: who cybercriminals are and how they are organised. He is a regular speaker at major conferences, such as Black Hat, Enigma and the International Conference on Cyber Security. Jonathan has also written widely across academic, policy and media publications, including for the European Journal of Sociology, the Council on Foreign Relations and The New York Times.

He is the author of Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime published by Harvard University Press. Fieldwork for this study took place over a 7-year period, involved travel to cybercrime hotspots around the globe, and included almost 250 interviews with law enforcement, the private sector, and former cybercriminals.

Jonathan holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar.

Publications

Other Publications

Teaching & Supervision

The bulk of my teaching is at Master’s level for the Department of Sociology. I convene the core methods course on Research Design, as well as my own option on the Sociology of Cybersecurity. This option is cross-listed with the MPhil in Global and Area Studies, for which I also convene the Qualitative Methods classes. I teach an intensive module on Cyber Threat Intelligence for the MSc in Software and Systems Security.

I am willing to supervise DPhil students across a range of topics and methods. With that said, my core areas of interest for supervision usually cross one or more of:

•   Cybercrime
•   Cybersecurity
•   Organised Crime
•   Sociology of Technology
•   Economic Sociology
•   Analytical Sociology

I’m particularly interested in taking on students who wish to engage in detailed case studies of cybercrime hotspots around the globe, and have the language skills and cultural knowledge to conduct fieldwork in these locations (e.g. Brazil, Nigeria, Eastern Europe, or Southeast Asia), or are committed to developing these skills.

While I am open to supervising hardworking students on a range of methods, my expertise is on qualitative methods and various forms of data collection/curation (e.g. interviews, questionaires/surveys; content analysis; experiments). If you wish to work on a topic which is highly quantitative or engages seriously with data science, but you think we are well matched, you may wish to consider a co-supervisor and/or have a high level of confidence in your methodological abilities in these areas.

Jonathan Lusthaus