In this talk, Jean-Louis van Gelder will give a brief, non-technical, introduction of virtual reality (VR) technology and discuss its potential for crime research. He will explain why this technology is uniquely suited to address problems that have traditionally plagued crime research. Specifically, he will explain that VR can provide an ecologically valid alternative for traditional research methods, or be used in combination with them, create research possibilities that are hard to realize otherwise, and allows for the study of phenomena that are difficult to study in the real world for ethical, budgetary, or practical reasons. He elaborates on what is currently possible, and also on what the coming decades could look like in terms of addressing novel research questions and filling gaps in the knowledge base. In the second part of the talk, he will provide examples of prior and current VR-based research conducted at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law that illustrates some of the possibilities of VR.
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