Hannah Rotthaus
Hannah Rotthaus
Doctoral project
Digitality as reflected in the prison context. Relational online and offline practices in everyday prison life (working title)
Abstract
Prisoners in Germany are largely offline. This empirical PhD project investigates how different stakeholders negotiate digitality within the prison system. Using participant observation and qualitative interviews, the study examines how prisoners experience their restricted access to digitality in prison and how they shape their offline daily lives in a society that is co-constituted by digitality. Based on the premise that digitality exerts an influence even in its absence, the analytical focus is not on technological presence but on the production of cultural meaning. Furthermore, the study explores how digital and social inequalities are interlinked and how a (lack of) digital habitus affects the capacity for agency of people serving long prison sentences.
Short biography
Since October 2021,
, scholarship holder / doctoral candidate in the MWK doctoral programme ‘Shaping the Future: Transforming the Present through Digitalisation Scenarios’ at the University of Oldenburg
2019–2021
Research assistant at the Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies at the University of Hamburg
2014–2018
MA in Cultural Anthropology/Folklore at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
2014–2016
, student assistant in the Department of Cultural Anthropology/Folklore at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
2010–2014
B.A. in German Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies (specialising in Folklore/Cultural Anthropology) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Teaching
The Future is Now? Future as a cultural anthropological field of research. Summer term 2024 at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Institute Colloquium: Behind Closed Doors? Empirical approaches, methodological reflections and ethical implications on fields that are difficult to access in winter semester 2021/22 at the University of Hamburg
Gender and digital technologies in summer semester 2021 at Universität Hamburg
Gender and digital technologies in winter semester 2020/21 at Universität Hamburg
Introduction to academic work and research-based learning in winter semester 2020/21 at Universität Hamburg
Introduction to academic work and research-based learning in winter semester 2019/20 at Universität Hamburg
Tutorial: Productions of creative spaces in winter semester 2014/15 at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Publications
Who owns the time? Ethnographic approaches to the experience of time in detention. In: Aksoy, Filiz et al. (eds.): Shaping the Future. Positionierungen zur Realitätsmacht gegenwärtiger Zukünfte (Cultural Sociology and Cultural History of the Present 4). Baden-Baden 2025, pp. 215-234.
(together with Hannah Kanz): No connection available. A dialogue on the exploration of voluntary and forced offline existence. In: Sabine Eggmann/Martina Röthl (eds.): Experience. Empirical-cultural-scientific scopes. A reader. Münster 2025, pp. 133-138.
(together with Lara Hansen): Feminist critique of science and the necessity of alliances in everyday research - a commentary. In: Hamburg Journal for Cultural Anthropology 14/2022.
Social inequalities after prison release. The aspiration of future within permanent liminality. In: Cultural Analysis 20/1 (2022). (Response to Sieferle, Barbara: Becoming an "Ex-Con." When Ritual Fails and Liminality Endures. In: Cultural Analysis 20 (2022/1), pp. 53-76.
Prison rallies as a practice of solidarity during the pandemic. In: Cuckoo. Notes on Everyday Culture 2/2021, pp. 20-23.
Negotiations of contraception in the context of digital introspection. Hamburg Journal for Cultural Anthropology 11 (2020).
"Your baby is as long as a romaine lettuce." Everyday Functions and Meanings of Pregnancy Apps. In: Everyday worlds. Bonn Perspectives on Cultural Analysis (2018).
Rituals in Bonn cultural anthropology/folklore. Seminar rituals in teaching, learning and life. In: Katrin Bauer/Lina Franken (eds.): Spaces | Things | People. Eine Bonner Kulturwissenschaft im Spiegel ihrer Narrative (Bonner kleine Reihe zur Alltagskultur 10). Münster/New York 2015, pp. 91-107
Review of: Sänger, Eva: Becoming a parent between "baby television" and medical surveillance. An ethnography of prenatal ultrasound examinations. Bielefeld 2020, published in: Bavarian Yearbook for Folklore.
Lectures
Diary of a Prisoner: Ethnofiction between ‘Writing Culture’ and the Logic of Doctoral Theses. 20th Conference of Doctoral Candidates of the German Society for Empirical Cultural Studies
(DGEKW). Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, 16 July 2026.
Volunteering to go to prison? Volunteering in the prison service. Series of lectures: “Why not just save the world?! Social discourses and practical examples relating to volunteering”. University of Hamburg, 13 January 2026.
Access denied? Insights into the negotiation of digitality in prison. Institute colloquium “Dark Anthropology revisited” at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology. Georg-August University of Göttingen, 22 May 2024.
Digital prison management or ‘offline detention’? Negotiations of future digitality in prison. 30th Conference of the ÖGEKW: “Everyday Life and Cultures of Digitality: (Empirical) Cultural Studies Perspectives on Sociocultural Change”. Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt, 20 May 2023.
Digitalisation in the Prison System: Possibilities and Limits of Critical Knowledge Production in Closed Fields. Workshop ‘Public Discourses on New Technologies and the Role of EKW/EE/KA’. Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 16 February 2023.
The Path into the Closed Field: Insights into the Ethnographic Study of Digitalisation Processes in Prison. 16th DGEKW Doctoral Candidate Conference: “Between Closeness, Distance and Sitting on the Fence – Questions of Representation and Ethics in the Research Process”. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 5 November 2022.
Paths (and detours) into and through doctoral studies. Online lecture series: Meet the Alumni. What comes after your degree? University of Bonn, 11 January 2022.
Self-tracking between self-determination, optimisation and care, using period-tracking apps as an example. 33rd Student Conference of the German Society for Folklore (dgv):‘SEX.SEX.SEX. Highlights and Abysses in Cultural Studies”, University of Hamburg, 15 May 2021.
Feminist Critique of Science and the Need for Alliances. 33rd Student Conference of the German Society for Folklore (dgv):‘SEX.SEX.SEX. Highlights and Abysses in Cultural Studies”, University of Hamburg, 13 May 2021 (jointly with Lara Hansen).
Poster presentation: Contraception in the context of digital self-monitoring. 17th efas Symposium:‘To shape or be shaped? Perspectives of feminist economics on digitalisation’, Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW), 6 December 2019.
Co-organiser: Digital Futures in the Making: Imaginaries, Politics, and Materialities.
9th DGEKW Conference of the Section “Digitisation in Everyday Life” of the German Association of Cultural Anthropology and Folklore Studies (DGEKW), Institute of Anthropological Studies in Culture and History, University of Hamburg, https://www.kulturwissenschaften.uni-hamburg.de/ekw/research/digiekw-conference-22.html