Forschung und Publikationen

• Projet de thèse: "Die Karzeralisten. Sozialgeschichte der Schweizer Teilnahme an internationalen Strafvollzugskongressen (1846-1950)"

  My thesis focuses on the Swiss actors who took part in international prison congresses between 1846 and 1950. Meeting periodically in various European cities, statesmen, penitentiary directors, philanthropists, lawyers and chaplains expressed their desire to reform and modernise prisons in their countries. More broadly, they reflected on ways to address the supposed social disorders caused by industrialisation and the proletarianization of a growing proportion of the population.
  My research aims to analyse the positions that these individuals defended within these congresses. It also traces their occupations abroad and in Switzerland, both within and outside the penal and penitentiary fields. This focus on actors allows us to look at the prison reform from the angle of three issues raised by historical and sociological literature: the construction of the Swiss federal state, the reproduction of class relations at this period of transformation of the nature of political domination, and lastly, the institutionalisation of prison administrations. By tracing the careers and occupations of the Swiss congressmen, I will discuss the way in which they participated in the formation of the Swiss state and shaped its contours. I will also analyse the various strategies of class reproduction in which they may or may not have been involved. Finally, I will consider the way in which the penitentiary congresses and their actors helped to legitimise prison institutions, despite the fact that they were often called into question during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• Publications
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