Conference «New Criminal History»

In its eighth edition, the colloquium, which is organised at regular intervals at different universities, focused on the discussion of continuities and change in the field of historical research on crime and criminal justice. The presentations of current research projects were combined with the question of how well the field connects to current developments in historical scholarship. In the past, historical crime research has played a significant role in the development and establishment of various new approaches within historical studies. Meanwhile, the decisive impulses come from other fields. The conference has shown that current historical crime and criminal justice research is indeed productively incorporating various of the newer approaches. These include, for example, the look at material cultures, the use of digital history tools, perspectives from queer criminology or approaches from transnational and global history. At the same time, older strands of research are still relevant, such as the inclusion of the history of knowledge or gender history or the view of connections between crime and identity and alterity.

In his contribution, Stephan Scheuzger outlined the potential of global history approaches for the history of prisons. Based on empirical research on this topic, on the other hand, he also took a critical look back at the approaches and concepts of global history.