Dr Laura Naegler PhD, M.A., Dipl.- Soz.Arb. (FH), FHEA

Personal Statement

Dr Laura Naegler’s primary area of research lies within the area of contemporary social movements, activism and resistance. This cross-disciplinary research is located within a theoretical tradition of critical and cultural criminology and includes specialization in topics such as international social movements, political action outwith the formal democratic process, gender dynamics within resistance movements and the interplay between urban control and forms of localised political governance regulation. Her research seeks both to inform policy critical areas of crime control and urban governance whilst also advancing theoretical debates within criminology,

Laura joined the University in Liverpool as a lecturer in criminology in September 2019. Before, she worked as a lecturer at Northumbria University Newcastle and at the University of Liverpool in Singapore. In 2013-2014 and 2017, Laura was a visiting scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City.

Laura’s formal training was conducted in different international contexts. She holds a M.A. (Diplom FH) in Social Work and Social and Cultural Science from the University of Applied Sciences Duesseldorf and an M.A. in International Criminology from the University of Hamburg. Laura was an Erasmus Mundus Fellow of the European Union and holds a PhD in Cultural and Global Criminology, jointly awarded by the University of Kent and the University of Hamburg. Her PhD research, supervised by Professor Jock Young, Professor Jeff Ferrell and Professor Susanne Krasmann, was an ethnographic study with activists in the US ‘post-Occupy’ movement.

Following on from this ethnographic research, Laura went on to conduct research on radical Left activism and resistance to the Trump administration in the United States. This body of work was oriented toward exploring the changing dynamics of resistance and questioning dominant imaginations of what it means to ‘be’ and ‘act’ politically. Aligning with feminist cultural criminology, she has, in recent times, collaborated in co-produced research exploring gendered resistance to image-based sexual abuse.

Both Laura’s first research monograph published by LIT Verlag and her second book to be published by Palgrave McMillan trace the lineage and development of international social movements. These books are informed by her primary ethnographic research conducted in Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia. Laura has published widely in esteemed and high impact factor international journals, including Theoretical Criminology, Feminist Criminology, Social Movement Studies, Urban Studies and Crime Media Culture. She has established an international profile in Criminology, having delivered invited presentations and conference papers at Universities in Europe, North America and South-East Asia.

The research projects that Laura is currently working on - in collaboration with Professor Gabe Mythen - build on her previous engagement and seek to develop new social science knowledge in areas of criticality, including the residual impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on environmental activism and developing forms of prevention to tackle mixed, unclear and unstable forms of extremism at points of intersection with ideologies of the Far Right.

Since 2021, Laura is the Co-Director of the International Criminological Research Unit (ICRU).

Laura would be happy to receive inquiries from PhD candidates working in areas around practices and processes of, and responses to, cultural and political resistance, new forms of activism and protest, gendered resistance, mixed, unclear and unstable forms of extremism, and crime control, social control and political activism in South-East Asia.