About us

Criminology at the University of Hamburg studies society from its “dark sides”, by looking at infringements, threats, and the manifold processes by which these are constructed and governed. The “extremes”, as we call acts of terror, hate crime, or refugee crises, and the political responses that follow them, render visible what constitutes the social and how it is (re)produced. Here, social processes of bordering and differentiation, inclusion and exclusion, normalisation and the constitution of law and order genuinely show.

The Chair of Criminology: Security and Resilience, studies contemporary as well as future sociality under conditions of global insecurity and a radicalisation of public spheres. Resilience here is not only understood as the capacity to respond to crises, but also as a practical “ethics of uncertainty”, through which collective life is devised and organised. A particular focus lies on the spatiality of such politics of uncertainty: what kinds of spatial configurations, such as zones of abandonment, enclosures, or divided urbanities emerge, and what consequences for practicing and re-imagining social and political life do they have?