Franziska Hohl is a sociologist. Her work lies at the intersection of sociology of law, organizational sociology, and the sociology of knowledge.

She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the project Water Crimes – Unpunished Wrongdoing, where she investigates practices in cases of water-related crime. Her research focuses in particular on the allocation of competences and responsibilities among criminal and administrative authorities, non-governmental organizations, and private actors, as well as on the relevance of “non-knowledge” in the handling of environmental offenses.

Between 2013 and 2025, she contributed to several research projects in the context of criminal law and criminal procedure law. In the project Revamping Anticorruption Criminal Law – Strategies and Consequences (RevACLaw), she examined prosecutorial practices across different countries, with a particular focus on the use of negotiated justice in cases of transnational corporate corruption, as well as on issues of transparency – or lack thereof – both on the part of judicial authorities and of convicted corporations.

As part of the project Intercepting with Interpreters, she explored the formal and informal processes through which roles are defined between police officers and intercept interpreters/translators, how these actors navigate daily trade-offs between procedural requirements and the need for informal practices, and how evidence is constructed by lay persons such as interpreters/translators.

Her contribution to the project The Changing Face of Criminal Trial, conducted at the Faculty of Law of the University of Basel, led to her doctoral dissertation. Drawing on an experimental study, her thesis demonstrates how different styles of police investigative interviews’ transcripts shape the perceptions of criminal judges (University of Bern, 2021).

Franziska Hohl holds a lic. phil. in sociology, history, and Arabic language and literature, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. She has also worked in various research institutes, public institutions, and private companies.

Scientific activity

Post-doctoral researcher in the research project Water Crimes – Unpunished Wrongdoing funded by the SNSF.

Publications

(2024). Role making in translational contexts: A qualitative study on the different roles of intercepts interpreters/translators in covert communication surveillance (avec C. Griebel). Translation in society.

(2024). Redefining interpreters’ and translators’ roles : unveiling forensic expertise in lawful interception of communication (avec N. Capus). Revista Estudos Institucionais 10/2, pp. 689-712.

(2024). La justice négociée dans la corruption transnationale – entre transparence et confidentialité (avec N. Capus, éds). Basel: Helbing Lichtenhahn.

(2024). Revamping Anticorruption Criminal Law – The Making of (In-)Transparency (avec N. Capus). In: Capus, N. & Hohl Zürcher, F. (Eds.). La justice négociée dans la corruption transnationale – entre transparence et confidentialité. Basel : Helbing Lichtenhahn, 15-47.

(2023). The work of intercept interpreters in lawful communication surveillance: a daily trade-off between formal requirements and informal needs (avec C. Griebel). International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 74.

(2022). Reduced statement credibility in interpreter-mediated interviews (avec N. Capus et M. Stoll). International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 29/2: 124-144.

(2022). Communicative (inter‐)action transcending the police investigative interview room (avec N. Capus). Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito, 9/2: 58-73.

(2021). Einvernahmeprotokolle lesen: Eine wissenssoziologische Untersuchung zur Rezeption von Einvernahmeprotokollen in schweizerischen Strafverfahren. (Thesis). Bern: Universität Bern.

(2017). Korrekturen in polizeilichen Vernehmungsprotokollen: Ein Risiko für die Verteidigung (avec N. Capus et M. Stoll). Monatsschrift für Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform 100: 147-160.

(2016). Physische und verbale Übergriffe auf die Polizei. Empirische Erkenntnisse zu den Viktimisierungserfahrungen der Luzerner Sicherheitspolizei (avec N. Capus et S. Mundhaas). forum poenale 9/6: 357-365.

(2014). Einvernahmeprotokolle: Der Stil beeinflusst die Richter (avec N. Capus). Plädoyer 32: 30-35.

Conferences

(2024) Disclosure of corruption: Results from a Swiss study on the corporate offenders’ communication, presentation at the Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, Bucharest (Rumania), 11-14 September 2024

(2024) Communicating corporate corruption cases: a delicate dilemma for public prosecturs, presentation at the Annual Conference of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL), Bangor (Wales, UK), 3-6 September 2024

(2023) Übersetzungsrealitäten und konstruierte Wirklichkeit in der geheimen Kommunikationsüberwachung [Translation realities and constructed reality in the secret surveillance of communication], presentation at the fifth congress of the German-speaking legal sociology associations, Innsbruck (Austria), 20-23 September 2023

(2023) Are intercept interpreters neutral translation machines or powerful language service providers? Results from a study within the legal borderlands of the secret surveillance of communication, presentation at the Socio-legal Studies Association Conference, Derry (Northern Ireland), 4th to 6th April 2023

(2022) Intercept interpreters in police communication surveillance: how many voices does law in action have in a multilingual context? (with Cornelia Griebel), presentation at the Swiss Network for Law & Society: Inaugural conference “Voices of Law”, Lausanne (Switzerland), 15./16.9.2022

(2022) Insights into interdisciplinary ethnographic research (with Cornelia Griebel), presentation at the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Collaborative Research and Writing, Neuchâtel, 5.5.2022

(2022) The work of interpreters in lawful surveillance of communication: A daily trade-off between formal requirements and informal needs (with Cornelia Griebel), presentation at the workshop for authors of the special issue « The politics of (in)formality in criminal procedures » of the International Journal of Law, Crime, and Justice, 7.3.2022

(2017) The interpreter: A disadvantage for foreign-language suspects in criminal proceedings, poster presentation at the conference of the Swiss Network for research on discrimination (SNDF/RSRD), Bern, 3.11.2017

(2016) Does lay participation in court affect the perception of statement credibility and suspect credibility? Insights from an empirical study with Swiss criminal law judges, presentation at the Conference of the European Society of Criminology, Münster (Germany), 22.9.2016

(2016) Rather a lay judge than a professional judge? Effects of legal education and judicial experience on the perception of credibility in criminal trials, presentation at the JDMx 2016 meeting (International conference for doctoral students), Basel, 10.6.2016

(2014) Impact and effects of police records in criminal law procedures (with an introduction of Nadja Capus), presentation at the Symposium « Recording in the Criminal Justice Process. Text, Sound, Image », Amsterdam (Holland), 2.12.2014