Meropi Tzanetakis

Dr Meropi Tzanetakis is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Criminology at the University of Manchester. She is also a Research Affiliate with the Governance of Digital Practices Research Platform at the University of Vienna (AT).

Meropi’s research contributes to two lines of research. First, it explores how digitally mediated forms of drug-related deviance emerge and how traditional forms of demand and supply change. In doing so, she contributes to the emerging field of digital criminology. Second, it explores how drug distributing platforms emerge as infrastructures that mediate between different user groups. The rise of the platform to the dominant business model is widely discussed as platformisation. In relation to both research directions, Meropi applies critical social theories and combines digital and analogue research methods. Meropi's research has received funding from a range of institutions, including the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Recently, she was awarded with the prestigious Elise Richter grant by the FWF.

Her work has been published in high-impact journals such as the International Journal of Drug Policy and Qualitative Research, among others. She edited Drugs, darknet and organised crime. Challenges for politics, judiciary and drug counselling (with Heino Stöver) and a special issue on Drugs and Digital Technologies (with Bernd Werse) of Kriminologisches Journal. Meropi is editorial board member of the interdisciplinary journal Kriminologisches Journal and elected board member of the Economic Sociology Research Network of the European Sociological Association.

Prior to joining the University of Manchester in 2022, Meropi was a Senior Scientist at the Department of Applied Sociology of Law and Criminology at the University of Innsbruck (AT) and before that a Senior Postdoc Fellow at the University of Vienna’s Department of Political Science (AT). As part of the FWF's Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship, she was a visiting researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex (UK) and in the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo (NO). Before that Meropi was a guest researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin (DE) and the Jacobs University Bremen (DE). She was also a Lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin (DE) and a Senior Researcher at the Vienna Centre for Societal Security (AT).

Meropi received a PhD in Political Science with distinction from the University of Vienna where she also holds a MA in Political Science, Media Studies and Communication Science with distinction.

For more information, please visit Meropi's personal website.

    International Society for the Study of Drug Policy

    European Sociological Association

    Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics

    European Society for Social Drug Research

    ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime

    ECPR Standing Group on Internet and Politics

    Association of Internet Researchers

    Austrian Political Science Association