Jure Leko
Managing Director
Jure Leko is a sociologist and cultural anthropologist, a civil society actor, as well as a DJ and producer.
Since 2025, he has served as Managing Director of the Émile Durkheim Research Unit: Crisis Analysis, where he is responsible for organizational processes while also pursuing his own research projects. His research focuses on crisis and transformation studies, qualitative and participatory research, migration studies, memory and postcolonial studies, legal anthropology, and discrimination and racism research.
Since 2025, Jure Leko has also been a lecturer at Hochschule Niederrhein (HSNR) in the Faculty of Applied Social Science. Together with students and civil society partners, he is implementing a participatory research project on the transformation of a post-migrant neighborhood in Mönchengladbach. The project is part of the “Niederrhein Urban Lab: Together for Social and Urban Transformation.”
Previously, he worked as a research associate on the project “Discrimination against People of Eastern European Origin in the Labor Market: Institutional and Individual Contexts” at the Federal Institute for Culture and History of Eastern Europe (BKGE). The project was funded from 2023 to 2024 by the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (ADS).
In 2023, he earned his PhD at the University of Bonn with the dissertation “Recognition and Migration: Struggles for Residence Rights of Refugee Roma.” The qualitative study reconstructs cycles of structural discrimination in the Western Balkans, forced migration, deportation, and return migration, situating migration as a social question and placing the democratic promise of equality at the center of the analysis.
Prior to his PhD, he was a research associate at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study “Law as Culture” in Bonn, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from 2010 to 2022. He also worked as a research associate at the Institute of Political Science and Sociology (IPWS) at the University of Bonn under Prof. Dr. Joachim Renn and Prof. Dr. Dirk Tänzler.
Beyond his academic work, Jure Leko has been actively engaged in civil society for over a decade. Since 2022, he has served as Chair of the Board of the Bonn Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Learning (BIM) e.V., the organization behind MIGRApolis – House of Diversity. There, he works at the interface of academia and civil society, fostering exchange among actors from different social fields, particularly through the Bonn Platform for Forced Migration Studies.
As a civil society actor and DJ, he has organized, supported, or realized well over 100 social, cultural, political, and artistic events both in Germany and internationally.
Academic Profile
Monographie, Sammelpublikationen und Herausgeberschaften
• Leko, Jure/Aleksandra Lewicki/Jannis Panagiotidis/Hans-Christian Petersen: Diskriminierung von Menschen osteuropäischer Herkunft auf dem Arbeitsmarkt: Das Jobcenter als Schnittstelle zwischen Arbeitsmarkt und Wohfahrtsstelle, Berlin 2025 (Link: https://www.antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/publikationen/Expertisen/studie_jobcenter.html?nn=305458)
• Leko, Jure: Anerkennung und Migration – Bleiberechtskämpfe geflüchteter Roma*, Frankfurt am Main 2026 (im Erscheinen).
• Leko, Jure gemeinsam mit Studierenden der HSNR: Untere Hindenburgstraße gemeinsam gestalten! Ein partizipatives Forschungsprojekt zur Transformation eines marginalisierten Stadtteils, Mönchengladbach 2026 (im Erscheinen).
• Gephart, Werner/Jure Leko (Eds.): In the Realm of Corona Normativities II – The Permanence of the Exception, Frankfurt am Main 2022.
• Gephart, Werner/Jure Leko (Eds.): Law and the Arts. Elective Affinities and Relationships of Tension, Frankfurt am Main 2017.
Artikel und kleinere Beiträge
• Leko, Jure: Rezension: Van Baar, Huub/Angéla Kóczé (Eds.): The Roma and Their Struggle for Identity in Contemporary Europe, New York: Berghahn Books 2022, in: ANTHROPOS. Internationale Zeitschrift für Völker- und Sprachenkunde, 117.2022/1, S. 282-285.
• Leko, Jure: At the Borders of Europe. On Spatial Mobility during the Covid-19 Crisis, in: Werner Gephart (Ed.): In the Realm of Corona Normativities. A Momentary Snapshot of a Dynamic Discourse, Frankfurt am Main 2020, S. 81-94.
• Leko, Jure: Migration Regimes and the Translation of Human Rights: On the struggles for recognition of Romani migrants in Germany, in: Social Inclusion, 5(3), 2017, S. 77-88.
• Leko, Jure: Law and the Arts. Elective Affinities and Relationships of Tension. An Introduction, in: Werner Gephart/Jure Leko (Eds.): Law and the Arts, Frankfurt am Main 2017, S. 7-22 (gemeinsam mit Werner Gephart).
• Prozesse in der Migrationsgesellschaft: Partizipative Forschung (WS 2025/2026)
• Kulturarbeit/Kulturpädagogik in der Migrationsgesellschaft: Rassimusforschung (SS 2025)
• Postmigrantische und migrationspädagogische Perspektiven auf kulturpädagogische Konzepte und Handlungsweisen: Partizipative Forschung (SS 2025)
• Methoden der qualitativen Sozialforschung (SS 2017)
• Migrationsregime (WS 2015/16)
• Aktuelle Debatten in der Kulturtheorie (SS 2014)
• Kultur und Sozialstruktur (WS 2013/14)
• Migration und Staat im globalen Zeitalter (SS 2013)
• Gedächtnistheorien im kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurs (SS 2012)
• Theorie und Ideengeschichte (WS 2011/12)
• Justice and Recognition? The Case of Romani People (im Rahmen der Konferenz: Discourses of Justice. Indicators of crises?, Bonn, 09.01.25 - Freitag, 10.01.25)
• Diskriminierung von Menschen aus dem östlichen Europ auf dem Arbeitsmarkt (im Rahmen der Konferenz: Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus. Brauchen wir eine „Osterweiterung“ der Rassismusdebatte?, Berlin, 26./27. September 2024)
• The Art of Law and Art Law (im Rahmen der Konferenz – The Käte Hamburger Center “Law as Culture”: Reflecting on a Paradigm and a Format of Knowledge, Bonn, 13. Mai 2022)
• Differential Inclusion: On the Materiality of the European Border Regime (im Rahmen des Law and Society Association 2019 Annual Meeting, 30. Mai - 2. Juni 2019, Washington, D.C., 1. Juni 2019)
• Repräsentation und Übersetzung von Citizenship. Wie geflüchtete Roma für ein Bleiberecht kämpfen (im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe: Migration, Diversität und Teilhabe, Hochschule Fulda, 24. Januar 2019)
• Zwischen Flucht, Asyl und Abschiebung: Zu Migrationsprozessen von Roma aus den ‚Westbalkanstaaten‘ (im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe: Faktencheck, MIGRApolis-Haus der Vielfalt - BIM e.V., Bonn, 18. Juli 2018)
• Kommentar zu Wohlrab-Sahr: „Multiple Secularities: Differenzierung, Bezugsprobleme, Leitideen“ (im Rahmen des Workshops: „Differenzierungskulturen – Zu einer kultursoziologischen Wende der Differenzierungsforschung“, Käte Hamburger Kolleg „Recht als Kultur“, 8./9.12.2016, Bonn)
• Zur Aneignung der Menschenrechte. Bleiberechtskämpfe geflüchteter Roma aus dem 'Westbalkan'. (Vortrag im Rahmen der 1. Tagung des Netzwerks Flüchtlingsforschung „65 Jahre Genfer Flüchtlingskonvention“ 6.-8. Oktober 2016, Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien (IMIS), Osnabrück)
• Grenzen der Übersetzung. Über die verkennende Anerkennung von Roma-Flüchtlingen (Vortrag im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe ‚GRASS‘ (Graduate School of Sociology), 29. Januar 2014, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)
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• Chair of the Board, Bonn Institute for Migration Research (BIM e.V.) (previously Treasurer, until Sept. 2022)
• Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the BMBF collaborative research project StraInWo (Strategies and Instruments for the Integration of Particularly Disadvantaged Groups into the Housing Market) (2016–2019) – organized by the Institute for Urban Research, Planning and Communication at FH Erfurt, HafenCity University Hamburg (Department of Urban and Regional Sociology), the Reinickendorf District Office in Berlin, and the property company TRAVE mbH Lübeck, in close cooperation with Gewobag Wohnungsbau-Aktiengesellschaft Berlin, GESOBAU AG, and the Hanseatic City of Lübeck
• Member, DGS Section “Migration and Ethnic Minorities”
• Member, Bonn Platform for Forced Migration Studies