01.02.2025 The CRC "Dynamics of Security" welcomes Visiting Fellow Julia Leser!

Julia Leser will conduct research at the CRC from February to July 2025 as part of a fellowship, working closely with the subproject C02 “Security, Police and Urban Space” under the direction of Prof. Dr. Sabine Mecking.

Julia's work lies at the intersection of political science and political anthropology, with a focus on policing, migration control, nationalism, right-wing extremism, political ethnography, and affect theory. She earned her PhD from Leipzig University in 2019 and most recently held a postdoctoral researcher position at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her first book, The Wolves Are Coming Back: The Politics of Fear in Eastern Germany (co-authored with Rebecca Pates, 2021, Manchester University Press), examines how the populist right politicized the return of wolves to East Germany as part of a broader project to normalize discourses on belonging and security. Her second monograph, Affective Policing: An Ethnography of Police Raids in the Sex Industry, is currently under review at Cornell University Press.

During her time at the CRC, Julia will prepare a new research project titled Institutional Responses to Right-Wing Extremism, which will investigate the institutional mechanisms and barriers involved in countering extremism.