David Finkelhor is director of the Crimes against Children Research Center, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory, professor of Sociology and university professor at the University of New Hampshire, USA. His core fields of interest have been the problems of child victimisation, child maltreatment and family violence, which he started to study in 1977. He is perhaps best known for his conceptual and empirical work on the problem of child sexual abuse, reflected in publications such as his Sourcebook on child sexual abuse (1986, Sage) and Nursery crimes (1988, Sage). He has done extensive research on child homicide, missing and abducted children, and children exposed to domestic and peer abuse.
In his recent work, for example, his book, Child victimization (2008, Oxford University Press), he has tried to unify and integrate knowledge about all the diverse forms of child victimisation in a field he has termed ‘Developmental Victimology’. This book received the Daniel Schneider Child Welfare Book of the Year Award in 2009. He is editor and author of 12 books and over 200 journal articles and book chapters. He has received grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, and the US Department of Justice, as well as a variety of other sources. In 1994 he was given the Distinguished Child Abuse Professional Award by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, in 2004 he was given the Significant Achievement Award from the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, in 2005 he and his colleagues received the Child Maltreatment Article of the Year award, in 2007 he was elected as a fellow of the American Society of Criminology, and in 2014 he was awarded the National Scientific Impact Award from the Kempe Center for the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect.
