The CSS Research Team comprises Research Fellows working on various ongoing projects at the CSS and is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann

Stefan Kaufmann, Dr. Phil., is Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Freiburg and Research Coordinator of the Center for Security and Society. He taught at the Universities of Basel and Leipzig, was Research Fellow at the ETH Zurich and at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld, and has held visiting professorships for cultural sociology at the University of Freiburg and for media theory at the University of Siegen. His work focuses on the sociology of security, war, technology and space. He is co-editor of the European Journal of Security Research and heads several third-party funded research projects on civil security at the CSS in Freiburg.

André Biermann

André Biermann is a sociologist (Dipl.-Soz.) and has been part of Stefan Kaufmann’s Research Team since November 2014 (with interruptions). Since March 2022 he has been working in the research project LegiNot, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In his current research work, he examines the discourse patterns of legitimation and critics of regulatory measures to control covid-19 (e.g. the wearing of face masks) on different levels of civil protection. Therefore, he is implementing a Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse, seeking for connections to the research on legitimacy,  the sociology of justification and the sociology of conflict.

David Czudnochowski

David Czudnochowski has been working as a Research Fellow in Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann’s Research Team at the CSS since April 2019. He works on the project „ZuRecht – Die Polizei in der offenen Gesellschaft“. His research focus on ethnographic fieldwork and questions about knowledge and information in everyday practice of police officers. He gained scientifical experience in criminological and medicalsociological research projects. At the moment he is preparing his PhD-project.

Dr. Nils Ellebrecht

Nils Ellebrecht has been a Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology working under supervision of Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann since 2009. His doctoral dissertation, focusing on "Organized Rescue", unfolds the sociological dimensions of emergencies and the implications of emergency routines. His research interests include the sociology of organization, new technologies and medicine.

Dr. Sabrina Ellebrecht

Sabrina Ellebrecht is a Senior Researcher in Sociology at the Centre for Security and Society at the University of Freiburg, Germany, where she currently leads the Mercator Foundation research group »The Police In An Open Society«. Her research interests lie in the fields of border and migration studies, political sociology, critical security studies, and police research. She was previously a visiting fellow at the DFG-Research Training Group »Topology of Technology« at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, and a visiting researcher the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa and the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

Franka Enderlein

Franka Enderlein is a researcher at the CSS since November 2020. She takes part in the Norface/DFG funded project „Information in the EU’s Digitalised Governance (INDIGO)“. Additionally she is a Ph.D. student of Prof. Dr. Jens-Peter Schneider. In this context she focuses on information processes in public health care.

Jasmin Feldmann

Jasmin Feldmann has been working as a Research Fellow at the CSS in Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann’s Research Team since February 2022. She works in the sociological subproject of the collaborative project "InGe". Her focal subjects are the sociology of knowledge and the foundations of empirical social research, especially reconstructive methods. Most recently, she has conducted a research on the topic of sexual violence.

Tjorven Harmsen

Tjorven Harmsen joined the CSS in April 2022 as part of the BMBF-funded joint research project „LegiNot“. Prior to this, she researched crises with a focus on the role of expert advice at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) in Erkner (12/2017-03/2022). Tjorven is a sociologist with a specialisation in Systems Theory. She brings experience from working in the operative crisis management of the German Red Cross (GRC).

Markus Jenki

Markus Jenki is a Research Fellow in Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaufmann's Research Team at the CSS. After finishing project KOMPASS, which aimed at designing, elaborating and implementing an integrative management system for patient care in large scale accidents at sea, he worked on the project SIKET (Evaluation and Improvement of Railway Tunnel Rescue Concepts). Combining computer based simulations of pedestrian and evacuation dynamics and real-world large scale exercises existing security concepts of railway tunnels should be reviewed and increased. He is working on the project InGe since October 2022.

Berit Paulsen

Berit Paulsen joined the CSS in March 2021 as a research associate and works in the BMBF-funded interdisciplinary project "ERAME". She studied German-French law and law at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Universitat de València and the Université de Paris-Est Créteil. She passed her 2nd state law examination in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz.

Sarah Praunsmändel

Sarah Praunsmändel joined the CSS Research Team in 2019. She is involved in the project „ZuRecht – Die Polizei in der offenen Gesellschaft“ and her research focuses on information and communication obligations as well as police decision making. She is a doctoral student of Prof. Dr. Ralf Poscher and lecturer for Public Law at Fulda University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Fulda).

Isabella Rick

Isabella Rick studied law in Regensburg, Aberdeen (Scotland) and Berlin. As an external doctoral candidate she is writing her dissertation on a constitutional law topic with Prof. Dr Thorsten Kingreen. At the CSS, she works as a research assistant for the ERAME project.

Dr. Benjamin Rusteberg

Dr. Benjamin Rusteberg held the Chair of Public Law, in particular Canon Law and State-Church Law, at the Georg August-University Göttingen (2020-2021). He previously worked for many years as an academic assistant at the Institute of Political Science and Philosophy of Law at the University of Freiburg. At the CSS, he is in charge of the jurisprudential sub-project of the ERAME project. His research focuses on police and public order law, security law and fundamental rights.

Kester Siegrist

Kester Siegrist is a researcher at the CSS since November 2020. He takes part in the Norface/DFG funded project „Information in the EU’s Digitalised Governance (INDIGO)“. Additionally he is a research assistent and Ph.D. student at the Institute of Media and Information Law, Abt. 2 of Prof. Dr. Schneider. 

Dr. Kristin S. Scharffscher

Normally based at the University of Stavanger in Norway, Kristin S. Scharffscher is a CSS international guest researcher for 2023-2024. Associate Professor in Societal security and crisis management, she will conduct research on transboundary crises with a special focus on community-level recovery mechanisms. Scharffscher recently led the international research project Fighting pandemics with enhanced risk communication: Messages, compliance and vulnerability during the COVID-19 outbreak / PAN-FIGHT (2020-2022), and she has been active in several EU-funded research and teaching collaboration projects. Scharffscher’s research interest encompass international emergency management and in particular gender-related capacities and vulnerabilities. She received her PhD and MSc in Safety and Crisis Management from the University of Stavanger in 2010 and 2002 respectively, and her BA (Hons.) in Print Journalism from the University of Westminster in 1994. In 2021, Scharffscher received the Excellent Teaching Practitioner Award.

David Stühler

David Stühler joined Prof. Dr Kaufmann in April 2021 as a research assistant in the DEFERM joint project. His work focuses on the structural framework and security cultures for defence against biological hazards in Germany and France. His other research interest include organisational sociology and socio-historical questions. He is doing his PhD in the DEFERM project under the supervision of Prof. Dr Stefan Kaufmann.

Zlatko Valentić

Zlatko Valentić is a Research Fellow at the Husserl Archive of the University of Freiburg and has been working at the Freiburg Centre for Security and Society since 2022. As part of the EU project VIGILANT, he conducts research on political and ethical aspects of the investigatinon of fake news with the help of modern surveillance technologies. In addition to philosophy, he studied history, political science and law at the Universities of Linz (AT), Salzburg (AT), Nijmegen (NL), Montreal (CA) and Freiburg im Breisgau (D). In 2010, he founded the podcast "Philosophical Experiment". His research focuses on philosophical hermeneutics and political philosophy.
Contact: zlatko.valentic@css.uni-freiburg.de

Laura Wisser

Laura Wisser joined the CSS Research Team in 2019. She is a member of the research group „Zu Recht – Die Polizei in der offenen Gesellschaft“. Her work focuses on legal questions regarding the recruitment of police staff and the aspects of qualification and representation. Her thesis is supervised by Prof. Dr. Ralf Poscher.