Research

Nina Perkowski's research investigates the transformation of security paradigms amid proliferating crisis narratives in contemporary society. Her work examines the emergence and evolution of security practices, analyzing how discourses and social imaginaries shape these transformations while reconstituting institutional and social relationships. Central to her research is the intersection of race, class, gender, and dis/ability in security processes and their resultant production of differential (in)securities.

Her scholarship centers on two primary domains. First, she conducts critical analyses of borders as sites of (in)security production. Through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, she investigates how border control institutions, particularly Frontex, navigate contested operational environments and how crisis narratives influence their institutional evolution. This research strand particularly examines the mechanisms through which violence becomes legitimized and normalized within EU border contexts.

Second, her work explores the manifestation of security practices in urban spaces. Through the participatory research initiative "Safe Spaces in Unsafe Times: A Safe City for All (SiSta)", funded by the BWFGB state innovation programme, she has developed innovative methodological frameworks for capturing localized security perceptions. This project deliberately incorporates traditionally marginalized perspectives in security discourse, advancing alternative conceptualizations of urban security beyond conventional control-oriented paradigms.

Nina Perkowski’s current research investigates how communities develop alternative security frameworks in response to multiple, overlapping crises, with particular attention to the role of social imaginaries and utopian thinking. As co-spokesperson for the “Futures, Utopias and Dystopias” project group at the Hamburg Academy of Sciences, she develops inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to analyzing these emergent security configurations.

Methodologically, her work is characterized by a reflexive pluralistic approach that integrates diverse qualitative and participatory methods. Rather than treating her methodological toolkit—which spans ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, document analysis, and participatory formats—as neutral instruments, she critically examines these methods as integral components of knowledge production. This enables a multidimensional analysis of (in)security: as institutional practice, as lived experience, and as a catalyst for social transformation.