Who are we?

Here should be a picture of us!
From left to right: Jens Sambale, Volker Eick, Eric Töpfer. At Eric's house. Click to enlarge it!

We are all political scientists trained at the undefinedOtto-Suhr-Institute (Freie Universität Berlin). We graduated a long long time ago (1993 and 1996) and went into a variety of research projects (politics of homelessness, labor-market policies, security regimes and urban surveillance) that more often than not had a comparative perspective. So the short ad hoc working definition is:

We do urban stuff!

That is the research side of things. On accounts of activism, we are not in the streets that much anymore. Some of us are still affiliated with alma mater (i.e. the undefinedJohn F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies and the undefinedZentrum Technik und Gesellschaft) but we do a lot of our work outside academia these days - and sometimes we even get paid! Not for this conference though. This conference is one in a series (actually the third). The unifying themes of these conferences are:

  • 1. An international, comparative urban perspective
  • 2. A broad funding base outside the main academic sources
  • 3. A publication a couple of month after the actual conference
  • 4. A lot of fun with our international friends
  • 5. (Self-) Exploitation
  • 6. Lack of sleep

See this undefinedwebsite for some of our publications (conferences and beyond) and this undefinedwebsite for some others.

If you wish to contact us either use the undefinedcontact form or this undefinedemail.

New at policing crowds:

Eric Töpfer: Video Surveillance as Crime Prevention?  Appeal to Change the Perspective 09:11 Eric Töpfer: Video Surveillance as Crime Prevention? Appeal to Change the Perspective
CCTV - Image showing work of an graffiti artist in London who went undetected despite cameras all around What follows is the english abstract of a paper which in its german version will appear in Kriminologisches Journal 4, 2009.
Volker Eick: Neighborhood Management meets urban security 15:24 Volker Eick: Neighborhood Management meets urban security
Lecture given by Volker for the Theory Workshop "Wir bleiben alle" during the "Action Weeks" in Berlin (June 13th 2009)
Volker Eick: Urbane Raum-und Räumdienste. Kommerzielles Sicherheitsgewerbe im Neoliberalismus 15:18 Volker Eick: Urbane Raum-und Räumdienste. Kommerzielles Sicherheitsgewerbe im Neoliberalismus
A lecture by Volker: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität, Frankfurt/Main Institut für Politik-und Gesellschaftsanalyse 25. Juni 2009
Analysing the present from a critical criminology perspective: pre-crime and post-criminology? Call for Papers 15:09 Analysing the present from a critical criminology perspective: pre-crime and post-criminology? Call for Papers
The Department of Law and Society at the Vienna Institute for Criminology and the Sociology of Law, the Department of Human Geography at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Working Group of Young Criminologists are delighted to invite papers to be presented at an international interdisciplinary...
Good jobs, nae jobs, bad jobs: Skills, workfare and struggles over work. Alternative Economy Strategy seminar. 04:18 Good jobs, nae jobs, bad jobs: Skills, workfare and struggles over work. Alternative Economy Strategy seminar.
Glasgow: Real Work Experience Political concerns over work and employment in recent years have firmly centred around two main issues. Firstly, training policy has increasingly focussed on questions concerning skills and individual employability. New skills sets are ostensibly required to fulfil the needs of a restructured...