Sofie De Kimpe (12 aug 1975) is full time Professor of Criminology at the Department of Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She has a Master degree in political science (administrative science), criminology and a PhD in criminology. She teaches subjects on policing, security policy and criminological methodology and theory. She started her criminological career at Ghent University with a PhD study on discourses of senior police officers: A sociological study of the discourses of the chief constables of the local police in Flanders. First as an academically assistant and afterwards as a post-doctoral researcher, she engages in the criminological research of the police, police organisation and police practices. In 2007 she became professor in criminology at the VUB, where she continued her research in the larger domain of police studies. 

From 2009 to 2013 she worked as an academic expert for the Minister of Interior and the Belgian Federal police, managing a project ‘police, a learning organization’. The project intended to rethink the Belgian police education system and implement a bachelor and master program for police studies within the Belgian Police. 

In 2013 she returned to the University of Brussels to withdraw her academic career as a full time member of the Crime & Society CRiS research group (https://cris.research.vub.be/en/home). Hence she is full professor at the faculty of law and criminology at the VUB. Since 2013 she teaches following subjects: ‘introduction in criminology’, ‘police studies’ and ‘methods of criminological research’ in the Bachelor of Criminology; ‘management in the criminal justice system’ and ‘policing & security’ in the Master of Criminology. She chaired the education board of the bachelor and master in criminology of the VUB between 2015-2018. 

Research-related, together with Lucas Melgaço, she leads the research line ‘policing and surveillance’ within the CRiS research group. She was (2013-2017) co-promotor of the Strategic Research Program I (SRP) ‘Crossing Borders: crime, culture and control’. She is co-promotor of the SRP II program of the CRiS research group, ‘Crime and Society: new challenges’. She is member of different editorial boards of national and international police journals (ex. International Journal of Police Science and management). 

She has supervised several PhD theses’ and research projects, all in the field of policing. Currently she supervises a PhD-project on police stop & search, a BRAIN-be project of Federal Science Department (Belspo), researching the impact of the counter-terrorism policy on policing activities and a project on diversity within the local police(funded by Open Society Foundation). She is chair of the EU COST ACTION network on POLICE STOPS (https://polstops.eu) together with Mike Rowe (Vice-chair). She is a founding member and member of the steering group of the ESC WORKING GROUP ON POLICING http://www.esc-eurocrim.org/workgroups.shtml#Policing

Important mentioning is her active role in the Flemish Centre of Security and policing and the editorial board of the CPS-Cahiers (http://www.policingandsecurity.be). The CPS-network is within Flanders the most important external policing network, consisting of representatives of universities, university colleges and police training institutes. The CPS plays a very important role in the validation of research knowledge in the police profession, the police organization and police education. She is a member of the advisory committee of the Scottish Institute for Policing (http://www.sipr.ac.uk/about-us/advisory-committee), the Scottish counterpart of the CPS.