(Léa) L.E.J.S. Masse MA

Léa Massé is a PhD candidate at the department of Criminology of the Erasmus School of Law. Her research interests are criminalisation of vulnerable communities, institutional and state violence, counter-culture movements, New Religious Movements and violence, late-modernity, existentialism, and resistance through artistic and political expressive forms.

In her current research project, she explores the lived experience and attraction of Islamic funtamentalist movements in Western countries and the broader, late-modern context in which such movements arise. Her approach draws on interpretive phenomenology, existentialist sociology and cultural criminological work on late-modernity. Combining life-course interviews, analysis of autobiographical documents and observations, she examines how Islamic fundamentalism has emerged over recent years as a counter-culture movement providing existential meaning and purpose to the individual.