Project description
The role of knowledge in criminal interrogations
History has shown that getting a suspect or a person of interest to confess to a crime is no easy feat. Over time, though, experts developed techniques and built knowledge on ways in which to secure confessions. Psychology often played a key role in this, too. The EU-funded InterPsy project seeks to determine how and why criminal interrogations were influenced by scientific innovations in psychology. It will explore the connection between knowledge interrogation and scientists and practitioners; how actors evaluated different forms of knowledge; the production of epistemic hierarchies; and how actors translated theory into practice. The findings will demonstrate why knowledge proves instrumental – whether exchanged, assessed or applied.
Objective
How could knowledge make an impact in the world and on people’s lives? This project investigates this question by studying the case of criminal interrogations and forensic psychology in Germany, France and the Netherlands between 1880 and 1940. Obtaining confessions, often crucial to convince judges or juries of a suspect's guilt, was a prime concern for many interrogators in 19th- and 20th-century continental Europe. Yet many suspects did not spontaneously confess. As a result, interrogators developed specific knowledge and techniques to obtain confessions, sometimes inspired by psychological insights. The goal of this project is therefore to assess to what extent, why and how scientific innovations in psychology (particularly in experimental psychology and psychoanalysis) made an impact on criminal interrogations. I will undertake three actions to this end. The first action is to study how knowledge about interrogation circulated among and between scientists and practitioners and within and between countries. The second action is to study how different actors evaluated different forms of knowledge and how epistemic hierarchies were produced. The third action is to study how formal, published knowledge about criminal interrogation related to actual interrogation practices in criminal investigations. The project thus adds a phenomenological perspective to the history of knowledge, studying how knowledge interacted with the bodies, feelings, spaces and objects. Taken together, these three actions will provide a case study that shows how – under what conditions and by what means – knowledge could make an impact in the world, through its circulation, evaluation and application.
Fields of science
Not validated
Not validated
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands