Fellows

Sociology of the Artificial City

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A relatively recent development across the globe, including in Europe, is that the policing of protest (demonstrations, rallies etc.) is simulated in artificial replications of cities. In facilities that are partly state-owned and partly military, quasi-urban terrains, police train for the challenges they anticipate in actual protest policing. For this purpose, they develop scenarios that they implement with the extensive deployment of equipment and personnel.

Drawing on the perspectives of urban sociology and political sociology, this project investigates such urban simulation spaces of the police in Europe. Using police simulations in Germany, France, England, and Northern Ireland as empirical examples in an ethnographic study, the urban realities of the simulative and the social significance of state regulation qua simulation are examined.

CV

Andrea Kretschmann is a sociologist and criminologist. She received her doctorate from the University of Bielefeld in 2015. Prior to her doctorate, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Legal and Criminal Sociology (Vienna). Since 2015 she has been a research assistant at the Centre Marc Bloch, An-Institute at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Since 2017, she has also been in charge of the Centre’s research group “State, Law, and Political Conflict.” In spring 2018 she was employed as a researcher in the visiting professors program at the EHESS in Paris. She has taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Bielefeld, and the University of Vienna, among others. She is the editor of juridikum, the Kriminologisches Journal, and the book series Gesellschaft & Verbrechen. Her research interests lie in the fields of political sociology, urban sociology, sociological theory, and the sociology of law and crime.

Publications