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. 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.

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).

PD Dr. Elisa Orrù

Elisa Orrù leads the Freiburg research contribution to the Horizon Europe project VIGILANT on desiformation related to criminal activities and of the BMBF-Project Freiburg-RESIST on communal resilience. In addition to her work at the CSS, she is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Department of Public Law) in Freiburg. In January 2020 she received her Habilitation (German qualification for full professorships) for the discipline Philosophy with a work on the legitimacy of digital security measures of the European Union. In Summer Semester 2023 she held the deputy Professorship for Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the Freiburg University.

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.

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