Lucia M. Sommerer, Ph.D., LL.M. (Yale)
Assistant Professor for Criminology and Criminal Law
Lucia M. Sommerer, Ph.D., LL.M. (Yale)
Short Profile
Lucia Sommerer is a German-American legal scholar whose research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology, white collar crime and environmental harms. She has studied law at Munich, Göttingen, Oxford and Yale University.
Organized White-Collar Crime & Green-Collar Crime
Her latest research on "Anti-Leviathan" analyses the state-eroding force of lawyers, bankers and advisors in offshore financial centres. Together with the Fraunhofer Institute she is developing an Anti-Money Laundering AI (MaLeFiz project ).
Her next research focus will be on money laundering of profits from environmental crime (green-collar crime).
Predictive Policing
Her PhD thesis explored the use of algorithms to calculate crime risks ("predictive policing" ). She was awarded the Körber Prize (1st place) and the Scholarship Award of the German Foundation for Law and Informatics as well as the Young Scholar Award of the German Criminological Society. An English translation was published in 2022. She was shortlisted for the Surveillance Studies Prize 2021.
A particular focus of her dissertation rested on a critical examination of the new technological developments under the lens of an impending "self-imposed algorithmic thoughtlessness" of the criminal justice system (conceptualization based on Hannah Arendt).
International Experience
During her studies in Munich and Oxford, she focused inter alia on the legal regulation of climate engineering technologies (such as carbon capture and storage). Her past roles include Editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology as well as intern at the Sino-German Institute for Legal Studies (Nanjing, China) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. She is co-founder of the young scholars conferences "Junges Digitales Recht 2021" and "Junges Nachhaltigkeitsrecht" . In 2023 she was a member of Halle University’s Climate Change Council. She is an affiliated fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project (USA).
Artistic Research
Since 2021 she is a member of the interdisciplinary "KollektivimFenster", which develops theater projects between art and science. Together with Dr. Daria Bayer, she hosts the Beyond-Law-Salon series in Berlin, during which topics of law and art are discussed, explored, and performed. She has advised the Staatstheater Mainz on the production of the Wirecard-play "Villa Alfons" .