Publications
Peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, reports and preprints produced by the TRACES team. Open-access where possible.
No TRACES publications yet — the project starts in 2026. See the preliminary research below, or the full bibliography at ahmed.ajil.ch/bibliography.
Subscribe to get new publications in your inbox →Preliminary research
The TRACES research agenda grew out of more than a decade of earlier empirical and conceptual work. The publications below lay the theoretical, methodological and legal foundations the project now builds on.
Book chapter · 2026
Ajil, A.
In Fink, D. et al. (eds.), Vom Scheiterhaufen zur Verwahrung — Umgang mit Minderheiten im Strafsystem. Basel: Helbing Lichterhahn Verlag.
An examination of how Swiss counterterrorism instruments structurally disadvantage Muslim populations, and what a non-discriminatory alternative could look like.
Journal article · 2025
Ajil, A.
Critical Terrorism Studies, 18(2), 478—504.
The conceptual spine of TRACES. Develops the notion of counter-terror power (CTP) by reading the everyday pains inflicted by CT as a window onto how that power actually operates.
Journal article · 2025
Ajil, A., Fischmeister, J., Venezia, M., Jendly, M. & Scalia, D.
Champ Pénal / Penal Field, 2025.
Based on interviews with psychosocial professionals involved in "soft" prevention of political violence in Switzerland and Belgium. Shows how practitioners keep their distance from essentialising public discourse and weave welfare-oriented logics into their work — a form of resistance that can, paradoxically, refine and perpetuate the very counter-terror power it pushes back against.
Journal article · 2024
Ajil, A.
Journal for Deradicalization, Summer 2024.
A methodological blueprint for the ethnographic fieldwork at the heart of TRACES — how to interview hard-to-reach populations across political violence with care, reflexivity, and rigour.
Journal article · 2020
Ajil, A. & Jendly, M.
Déviance & Société, 44(4).
A close-grained reconstruction of how Swiss institutions collectively fabricated one individual — "Sami" — into a paradigmatic terrorist enemy, and what his case teaches about the machinery behind that label.
Journal articles · 2024
Ajil, A.
Jusletter (17 June 2024, DE) · Derecho Penal, Política Criminal y Criminología (2025, ES / FR).
Three linked articles on how Swiss terrorism jurisprudence reproduces, amplifies and legitimises the very propaganda it claims to prosecute — taking the case of Salafist cleric al-Muhaysini as its lens.
Journal article · 2021
Ajil, A. & Lubishtani, K.
Jusletter, 31 May 2021.
A legal-empirical account of how jihadist terrorism cases are tried at Switzerland's Federal Criminal Court — the court that sits at the centre of TRACES' Swiss fieldwork.
Full bibliography, including chapters, op-eds and public-facing writing, is maintained at ahmed.ajil.ch/bibliography.