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Resistance, imagination, and knowledge production in the radical housing movement in NYC

I hold a diploma degree in Social and Cultural Sciences and Social Work from the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf and a M.A. in International Criminology from the University Hamburg. My Master Thesis, “Gentrification and Resistance. Cultural Criminology, control and the commodification of urban protest in Hamburg” was published 2012 by LIT Verlag Berlin. Before I started the DCGC, I worked as a lecturer in criminology at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf. Since 2009, I’m a regular participant of the Common Study Programme in Critical Criminology. From 2009 to 2011, I was the University Hamburg student representative of the program.

In the DCGC, I’m co-supervised by the University of Kent and the University Hamburg. From 2013 to 2014 I was a visiting researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Based on critical ethnographic research, my dissertation analyses the production of knowledge and the relationship between theory and action in the radical housing movement in NYC. It is particularly focussing on conceptualizations of resistance by researching how activists constitute methods of resistance to urban development, the commodification of urban space, gentrification, eviction and displacement ‘through and as space’ by utilizing ‘spatial’ resistant practices as a symbolic and material (re-)appropriation of space, and by constructing space as prefigurative politics. Further, the dissertation questions the role of academic research by opposing it to alternative models of knowledge production, e.g. militant research.

Publications

• Naegler, L. (2012): Gentrification and Resistance. Cultural Criminology, control, and the commodification of urban protest in Hamburg. Hamburger Studien zur Kriminologie und Kriminalpolitik, Bd. 50. Berlin: LIT Verlag
• Naegler, L. (2013): „Vom kriminellen Raum zum widerständigen Raum. Gentrifizierungswiderstand im Hamburger Schanzenviertel“. Kriminologisches Journal, 45 (3), 195-209
• Naegler, L. (2014): “The ritual of insurrection and the ‘thrill seeking youth’. An instant ethnography of inner city riots in Germany”. Pakes, F. and Pritchard, D. (eds.): Riot, Unrest and Protest on the Global Stage. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Brotherton, D. and Naegler, L. (2014): “Jock Young and social bulimia: Crime and contradictions of capitalism”. Theoretical Criminology 18 (4) 441-449