Lucia Sommerer

Lucia Sommerer is a binational (German-American) assistant professor with focus on the intersection of criminal law, criminology, emerging technology and white-collar crime. She has studied law at Munich, Göttingen, Oxford and Yale University.

She is currently working on organized white-collar crime in connection with offshore financial centres and cryptocurrencies.

Together with computer scientists of the Fraunhofer Institute she is, further, developing an Anti-Money Laundering AI (MaLeFiz project).

Her PhD thesis at the University of Göttingen explored the use of algorithms to calculate crime risks ("predictive policing"). An English translation was published in 2022. A particular focus of her dissertation rested on the 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).

She is a member of the interdisciplinary "KollektivimFenster", which develops theater projects between art and science and co-hosts the Beyond-Law-Salon series in Berlin, during which topics of law and art are discussed, explored, and performed.