Dr. Sarah Klosterkamp

since 10/2020: Research assistant in the AG Social Geography (Prof. Nadine Marquardt) at the Department of Geography, University of Bonn.

01/2019-12/2020: Research assistant in the externally funded project: "Geographical constructions of space and identity in the context of Islamist terrorism - A political-geographical analysis of German state protection procedures in the context of the Syrian civil war" (funded by Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, funding code: 10.08.2.008SO) (director: Prof. Paul Reuber)

06/2015-12/2018: research assistant in the research group Political Geography/ Social Geography (Prof. Paul Reuber).

10/2012-09/2015: Studies of Political Science with the profile "Constitution and Decay of Political Order in Transnational Perspective" with the minors Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Leipzig - Degree: Master of Arts (Political Science, grade 1.1)

10/2006-09/2012: Studies of Geography and German Studies with the minors Education and Political Science, University of Münster - Degree: 2-subject Bachelor (German & Geography, Grade: 1,7) as well as Master of Education (Geography & German Studies, Grade 1,1)

06/2022: Visiting Lecturer at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Research at the University of Graz, Austria (funded by Erasmus+ program).

03/2019-04/2019: Study abroad and research stay in New York, Washington DC and Austin, USA (funded by the Graduate Center of WWU).

03/2018: Visiting fellow at the Feminist Geography Collective at the University of Texas at Austin, USA (funded by the Graduate Center of WWU).

08/2014-12/2014: Semester abroad at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Science at the University of Houston, USA (funded by PROMOS)

09/2009-10/2009: Stay at the National Mirzo Ulug`bek University Tashkent, Uzbekistan (funded by DAAD)

Gezer, Ö., Klosterkamp, S. & T. Neshitov: „Mami, schick mal Geld". DER SPIEGEL, 23/2021, 60-68. Available online here

Content Overview and Relevance:
What does it do to parents when their children become IS terrorists? Sarah Klosterkamp attended six years of trials against Syrian returnees and evaluated them for her doctoral thesis. The case of the S. family stood out from the crowd because, for the first time, parents who supported their children in the war were in the dock. They helped them procure weapons and equipment for the "Islamic State" in Syria, where the two held high positions. Together with SPIEGEL reporters Özlem Gezer and Timofey Neshitov, Klosterkamp sifted through nearly 60,000 pages of files. The team read interrogations and wiretap transcripts, evaluated expert opinions and bank statements in order to trace the system that had led to this indictment. They sat for many hours in the father's living room in Cologne and talked to him. He showed them his diaries, family photos, mails and messages that his sons had written to him, photos and videos of his visit to Syria. The team also researched the family's surroundings, visited a former employer and a Cologne pensioner who had adopted the mother in the meantime. The team met almost only interlocutors who were not aware of any guilt.

Gezer, Ö.; Haidar, A. & S. Klosterkamp: „Der Vater der Wölfe". DER SPIEGEL, 32/2017, 58-63. Available online here

Content Overview and Relevance:
Abo Dieb enters Germany in 2015 as one of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. He is assigned to the city of Münster and lives there for some time. Then it turns out: he is alleged to have tortured and killed people in Syria - people like Abo Abdo. A few months later, a German judge sits in front of them and tries to understand what happened in this distant war that these two men brought with them, to the Europe they praised, to his courtroom. The story of these two Syrians is one that has always existed in every war, in Rwanda, in the Congo, in Yugoslavia, in the Third Reich, where perpetrators and victims fled along the same paths and to the same countries. Yet war crimes have rarely been tried in recent decades because evidence is hard to come by or victims are impossible to find. This story is the first major documentary on war crimes that have occurred in Syria in recent years and are now the subject of court cases in Germany. Özlem Gezer, Asia Haidar and Sarah Klosterkamp embarked on a journey across Europe for this story. They sifted through 36,000 wiretapped phone calls and more than 20,000 pages of investigative files and court transcripts. These materials show that there are no clear-cut perpetrators and victims in this context, but that the boundaries are fluid.