I am an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Digital Criminology at the University of Manchester. I am also a Senior Research Fellow of the interdisciplinary research platform Governance of Digital Practices at the University of Vienna.
My research contributes to two lines of research. First, it explores how digitally mediated forms of drug-related deviance emerge and how traditional forms of demand and supply change. In doing so, I contribute to the emerging field of digital criminology. Second, it explores how drug distributing platforms emerge as infrastructures that mediate between different user groups. The rise of the platform to the dominant business model is widely discussed as platformisation. My interdisciplinary research, merging approaches from criminology, political science, and sociology, analyses socio-economic transformations in the interactions between law enforcement, governmental actors, and organized crime. By intertwining theories of change with diverse methods of empirical social research, from digital ethnographic observations to big data analysis, my work contributes to the advancement of these fields of research. I examine the dynamics of illicit markets to comprehend and explain the impacts of digitisation on social structures. This opens up constructive possibilities for shaping politics, the economy and society in transition. I was able to successfully acquire and lead third-party funded projects from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the FFG. Recently, I was awarded with the prestigious Elise Richter grant after receiving an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship by the FWF and the Marie Jahoda Fellowship by the University of Vienna.
My work has been published in high impact journals including the International Journal of Drug Policy and Qualitative Research. I edited Drogen, Darknet und Organisierte Kriminalität. Herausforderungen für Politik, Justiz und Drogenhilfe (Drugs, Darknet and Organised Crime. Challenges for Politics, Judiciary and Drug Counselling) (with Heino Stöver) and a special issue on Drugs and Digital Technologies (with Bernd Werse) of Kriminologisches Journal. I am editorial board member of the interdisciplinary journal Kriminologisches Journal (KrimJ) and elected board member of the Economic Sociology Research Network of the European Sociological Association (ESA).
I received a PhD in Political Science (with distinction) from the University of Vienna where developed a thesis on the relationship between drug trafficking and the restructuration of the European Union, and I hold a MA in Political Science, Media Studies and Communication Science (with distinction).
Prior to joining the University of Manchester, I was a Senior Scientist at the Department of Applied Sociology of Law and Criminology at the University of Innsbruck and a Senior Postdoc Fellow at the University of Vienna’s Department of Political Science. As part of the Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship, I was a visiting researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex and in the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo. Before that I was a guest researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin and the Jacobs University Bremen. I was also a Lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin and a Senior Researcher at the Vienna Centre for Societal Security.
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