University of Hamburg
With almost 40,000 students, the University of Hamburg is Germany’s third largest university. The University has 23 partner universities, many Erasmus agreements, 7 collaborative research centres, 6 state clusters of excellence and important research associations (eg two international Max-Planck-Institutes).
The Institute for Criminological Research (IKS) is in the Department of Social Sciences. Its focus on sociological approaches to the study of crime and control distinguishes it from the juridical approach of other German criminological institutes. The IKS works with international institutions: the University of Pernambuco/Recife (Brazil), the Groupe Européen de Recherche sur les Normativités (GERN) and the Institut National d'Hautes Études de Sécurité in Paris. Staff are involved in major criminological societies: for example the Interdisciplinary Society of Scholarly Criminology, and publish widely in criminological journals, eg Punishment & Society, Security & Dialogue and Kriminologisches Journal.
The University of Hamburg has a high academic reputation and its Institut für Kriminologische Sozialforschung (IKS) offers the only full time English-taught Master in International Criminology in Germany. The IKS provides up-to-date interdisciplinary, critical criminological research and scholarship by experienced and reputed scholars. Through its existing M.A. program in International Criminology, the Institute has substantial experience in exchanging knowledge about different cultures, comparing different criminal justice systems and evaluating alternative approaches to understanding and addressing crime in a global context. The Institute’s staff are all reputed research leaders in their fields, with excellent teaching records, as well as long and established experience in the supervision of doctoral candidates. In thesis supervision, the IKS contributes expertise in the following fields: international drug policy and cultural contexts; terrorism, security policy and human rights; migration, crime and social exclusion; ethnographic research/methodology; punitiveness; transformations in the rule of law; and the sociology of deviance and control.
Professors Fritz Sack and Sebastian Scheerer at Hamburg are highly influential in the field of critical criminology in Europe and the USA.
