Harm Reduction and Beyond – Transatlantic Perspectives

Across Europe and North America, harm reduction initiatives have historically evolved out of grassroots and volunteer activist movements engaging in on-ground social work. Though the scientific research that supports decriminalization of substances exists, bottom-up practices are still vital to the health of substance users. Public facing interventions, self-organization, and  continual engagement with at-risk community members, harm reduction provide a engagement for social health. This social engagement not only helps facilitate the distribution of medical help but continues to promote and engage an enduring process of social work. 

A transatlantic comparison between North American and European practices of harm reduction considers the social and political frameworks necessary for providing care to high-risk persons. How does the discussion of harm reduction change when talking about high-risk consumers under surveillance, and how is drug-competency taught? What kinds of policies and discourses become salient within a ‘harm reduction’ approach, what kinds become silenced? 

In this panel, we will discuss the origins of harm reduction, emerging practices in dense urban areas, and the continual methods of engagement that maintain harm reduction as a medically-focused movement, a social service, and an ongoing practice of safely practicing substance use.

The roundtable-format will allow the audience and panelists to exchange ideas and experiences in an informal setting – sitting around a large table. The events are limited to 40 participants.


Sebastian Bayer is a social worker (M.A.) and has been working for more than 10 years in “accepting drug work” at Fixpunkt e.V., a Berlin/Germany based organization. One focus of his work is HIV and hepatitis prevention in the context of drug use. Currently, he is responsible for the drug consumption mobile team Neukölln as well as for the low-threshold and outreach HIV/hepatitis test counseling in the context of homelessness and drug use.‍

Thomas Bürk is trained and educated as a cultural anthropologist and social geographer, recently working as Professor of Social Work at the IB Hochschule for Health and Social Work in Berlin/Germany. His research falls mainly into the field of (critical) urban studies, the social production of “public” spaces and the practices of a “pharmacological self” in dealing with everyday work and life in Cities.‍

Machteld Busz is director of the Dutch Mainline Foundation, an organization that works for the health and human rights of drug users in the Netherlands and beyond. Busz is also the initiator and director of the drug museum in formation Poppi Drugs Museum Amsterdam.‍

Nancy Campbell writes books about harm reduction in relation to histories of drug science, policy, and culture: OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose (MIT Press 2020); The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Drug Addicts (with JP Olsen and Luke Walden; Abrams 2008); Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research (Michigan 2007); and Using Women: Gender, Drug Policy and Social Justice (Routledge 2000). She is a professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. ‍

Tori Gruber is an urbanist and harm reduction researcher, recently graduating from the New School. She conducts ethnographic interviews to understand the multiple roles of social work in judicial and medical spaces to begin mapping harm reduction ecology as social fieldwork to inform better governing structures. ‍

Celia Joyce (she/her) is the data and operations analyst at New York County Defender Services. In her first role at NYCDS, she helped develop the pilot program for a new position dedicated to liaising with and advocating for clients incarcerated in New York City and State correctional facilities. As an analyst, her work has informed numerous publications and bolstered testimony delivered in front of various governing bodies. She has also contributed to a number of policy campaigns, including those for the Bail Elimination Act, the ‘HALT’ Solitary Confinement Act, and the Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA). ‍

Tamara Oyola-Santiago is Co-Director for the Institute for Transformative Mentoring, a restorative practices and healing program focused on gun violence prevention at the New School and is co-founder of Bronx Móvil, an anti-racist and mobile harm reduction organization in New York City. 

This event is part of the Narcotic City Event Series at 1014 which explores the discourses, imaginaries, practices, and consequences of public drug use from the 1970s until the present with a focus on American and European cities. Across three evening roundtables, we address how cultures of drug consumption are interwoven into public spaces, everyday lives, and public memories of cities, bringing together expert activists, scholars, and workers on public health, narcotic cultures, and archival politics from the US, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

During the evening events, 1014 will also present part of the Narcotic City Archive – the first interactive archive to collect and preserve the material and immaterial heritage of narcotic use and governance in the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its launch in 2021, this innovative resource fosters knowledge, visibility, and engagement between researchers, activists, users, and a wider public. More: www.narcotic-archive.org.

The Narcotic City Event Series is organized by the international research project “Governing the Narcotic City” together with 1014 and KWI - Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen and with generous support from The Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) program.