Prof. Dr. Daniela Hunold | Director

Prof. Dr. Daniela Hunold has been professor of sociology with a focus on empirical police research at the HWR Berlin since spring 2022. Before, she had been devision chief for crime analysis and research at the State Criminal Investigation Office (Landeskriminalamt) Bremen and Post-Doc at the German Police University in Munster. She earned her doctorate in a german-french project about the relation between police and adolescents in multi-ethnical communities at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg i.Br. Her research focuses are in police and police action in the immigration society and the critical sociology of space.

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Aden | Deputy Director

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Aden has been a professor at the HWR Berlin since 2009, Professor of Public Law, European Law, Political and Administrative Science since 2016 and Deputy Director of FÖPS Berlin since 2025, as he was between 2016 and 2020. From 2020 to 2024 he was also Vice President for Research at the HWR. He teaches and conducts research on legal and administrative science topics as well as comparative policy research. His research projects focus primarily on the interfaces between law, politics and administration from a national as well as European and international perspective.

Prof. Dr. Mischa Hansel | Deputy Director

Prof. Dr. Mischa Hansel has been professor of social sciences with the focus cyber- and information security at the HWR since 2023. Previously, he had been working at the politic scientific institutes in Cologne, Giessen and Aachen and had lastly been leading the research focus International Cyber Security (sponsored by the German Federal Foreign Office) at the IFSH in Hamburg. His research concentrates on cyber security architecture – from local to global level, the role of private players in the cyber security politics, as well as the usage of new technology in geo-political conflicts.

Prof. Dr. Christoph Kopke | Deputy Director

Prof. Dr. Christoph Kopke has been professor of political science and sociology at the HWR Berlin since 2015. Before he was research assistant at Moses Mendelssohn Centre, University Potsdam. From 2021 to 2025, he was Dean of Faculty 5 at the Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR Berlin). He is an expert on right-wing extremism.