The IKG wants to congratulate Dr. Kerstin Eppert, Dr. Anja Schmidt-Kleinert and Dr. Nicole Bögelein for the launch of the network IN-COURT. Specially congratulates its two members Dr. Kerstin Eppert and Dr. Anja-Schmidt-Kleinert for this achievement.

The Interdisciplinary Research Network Courts on Trial (IN-COURT) was founded in March 2023. It is currently coordinated by Dr. Nicole Bögelein (Cologne), Dr. Kerstin Eppert (IKG, Bielefeld) and Dr. Anja Schmidt-Kleinert (IKG, Bielefeld) who successively built up the network, starting from an online workshop entitled “’On Behalf of the People’ – Courtrooms as field of research on political violence, radicalization, extremism and terrorism” in September 23, 2021. Subsequently, and thanks to a generous grant from the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF), the international conference “Terrorism in Court – National Courts as Empirical and Epistemic Fields of Research” was organized from November 7 to 9, 2022, at the Centre for interdisciplinary Studies (ZiF) at Bielefeld University.

The network offers a space for cooperation and exchange for researchers in the field of socio-legal studies. It comprises researchers and expert practitioners mostly from the disciplines of Sociology, Criminology, (International) Criminal Law, Socio-Legal Studies, Human Geography, but also Architecture, International Relations and Feminist Studies. Researchers in the field of courtroom research study, among other things, the effects of law on society and its negotiation in court with an interdisciplinary approach. Conversely, the researchers are also interested in the effects of social norms and cultural perceptions on the law and the forms of its enforcement.

Here you can find the website.