Dr. Paul Trauttmansdorff
Postdoc
Philosophy and History of Science and Technology
Ethical Data Initiative
I am a researcher in the social studies of science and technology, focusing on the imaginaries and infrastructures of datafication as well as their social, political and ethical ramifications. More specifically, I am interested in how data is produced, valued, and circulated, and how these practices shape knowledge and governance in areas such as security, surveillance, and medicine.
I completed my first undergraduate studies in Philosophy (BA) at the University of Vienna and Socioeconomics (BSc) at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. I continued my master’s degree in Political Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Upon returning to Vienna, I began my doctoral studies in Science and Technology Studies at the Department of Science and Technology Studies of the University of Vienna (supervised by Ulrike Felt) and as a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. My research focused on the imaginaries of future borders and how they shape the large-scale construction of migration control databases. During my PhD, I received the Marietta-Blau Scholarship from Austria’s Agency of Education and Internationalisation.
After my PhD, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies at the University of Bologna, where I was a team member of the ERC Project “Processing Citizenship – Digital registration of migrants as co-production of citizens, territory and Europe” (PI: Annalisa Pelizza). In October 2023, I became a Fellow at the European New School of Digital Studies at the European University Viadrina and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair for Sociology of Technology.
I joined the group at TUM’s Chair of Philosophy and History of Science and Technology (Chair: Sabina Leonelli) in October 2024 and became part of the Ethical Data Initiative, where I act as one of the education leads (https://ethicaldatainitiative.org).
I am currently a Friedrich Schiedel Fellow, where I follow the creation of medical faces using face recognition technology (project: Coding Faces in Medicine, https://www.codingfaces.com)
My research broadly revolves around
- Data Imaginaries
- Infrastructures of datafication
- Data ethics and data justice
- Borders, security, and mobilities
- Biometric data and technologies
Books
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2024. The Digital Transformation of the European Border Regime. The Powers and Perils of Imagining Future Borders. Bristol: Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529235203.001.0001
Klimburg-Witjes, Nina, and Paul Trauttmansdorff, eds. 2023. Technopolitics and the Making of Europe: Infrastructures of Security. London: Routledge.
Articles (peer-reviewed)
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. forthcoming. "Borders and Surveillance." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Society, Oxford University Press.
Gorrieri, Laura, Leonelli, Sabina, and Paul Trauttmansdorff. Under review. "Between Explaining and Understanding: Rethinking Explainability in Medical Diagnostics." Cambridge Forum for AI: Culture and Society.
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2025. "Against interoperability? Terrains of technopolitical contestation and the remaking of EU border infrastructure." Big Data & Society 12(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241307909
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Chiara Loschi. 2025. "Interoperability and the multiple modes of ordering in Europe’s digital border regime." International Migration 63(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.70022
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Annalisa Pelizza. 2025. "From embracement to attachment: Registering on the move and the couplings of noncitizenship and territory." Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 43(7): 1294-1313. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544251322768
Pelizza, Annalisa, Chiara, Loschi, Olivieri, Lorenzo, Trauttmansdorff, Paul, Wouter Van Rossem. 2024. "Manifesto on the Datafication of Mobility Across Borders." Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 10(3): 207–16. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.2831
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2023. "The Fabrication of a Necessary Policy Fiction: The Interoperability 'Solution' for Biometric Borders." Critical Policy Studies 17(3): 428–46. doi:10.1080/19460171.2022.2142587
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Ulrike Felt. 2023. "Between Infrastructural Experimentation and Collective Imagination: The Digital Transformation of the EU Border Regime." Science, Technology, & Human Values 68(3): 635–62. doi:10.1177/01622439211057523
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2022. "Borders, Migration, and Technology in the Age of Security: Intervening with STS." TECNOSCIENZA. Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies 13(2): 133–54. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17584
Klimburg-Witjes, Nina, Matthias Leese, and Paul Trauttmansdorff. 2022. "Expanding Boundaries: Un/Remaking Secrecy in Field Research." Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences 3(2): 168–97. doi:10.1163/25903276-bja10039
Articles (non peer-reviewed)
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Kim M. Hajek. 2025. "Data shadows: When data become tangible, material and visual." Patterns 6(3): 1–3. doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2025.101206
Hajek, Kim M., Trauttmansdorff, Paul, Leonelli, Sabina, Guttinger, Stephan, and Silvia Milano. 2025. "Responsible and Resilient Data: The Ethical Data Initiative." Computer 58: 95–99. doi.org/10.1109/MC.2024.3522696
Book Chapters
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. forthcoming. "Digital Bordering as a Bio-Machine. ‘Europe’ and its Organism of Border Control." In The Revealing Power of Borders in the ‘geopolitical moment.’ The European Union and the Movement of People, edited by Michela Ceccorulli. Palgrave Macmillan.
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, Dauchy, Alizee, Perret, Sarah, Pollozek, Silvan, and Maria Volkova. forthcoming. "Failure." In Migration Data Matters. A Keyword Approach to the Datafication of Migration and Border Control, edited by Silvan Pollozek et al. Liverpool University Press.
Dauchy, Alizee, Pollozek, Silvan, Fill, Alice, Oostrom, Iwan, Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Maria Volkova. forthcoming. "Interoperability." In Migration Data Matters. A Keyword Approach to the Datafication of Migration and Border Control, edited by Silvan Pollozek et al. Liverpool University Press.
Klimburg-Witjes, Nina, and Paul Trauttmansdorff. 2023. "Making Europe through Infrastructures of Security: Introduction." In Technopolitics and the Making of Europe, edited by Nina Klimburg-Witjes and Paul Trauttmansdorff, 1–18. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003267409-1
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2017. "The Politics of Digital Borders." In Border Politics. Defining Spaces of Governance and Forms of Transgressions, edited by Cengiz Günay and Nina Witjes, 107–26. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-46855-6_7
Reviews
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2025. "Toward an Anthropology of Screens. Showing and hiding, exposing and protecting, by Mauro Carbone and Graziano Lingua. Translated by Sarah De Sanctis. 2023. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan." Journal of Responsible Technology 21: 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100111
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2023. "Elliott Anthony (2023) Algorithmic Intimacy. The Digital Revolution in Personal Relationships. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. 220 pages. ISBN: 978-1-5095-49818." Science & Technology Studies 36(2): 78–80.
Data Matters: Sociotechnical Challenges of European Migration and Border Control (DATAMIG), COST Action No. CA22135 (Working Group 1 member)
STS-MIGTEC Network (Member of the Coordination Committee until 2023)
Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S)
European Association of Science and Technology Studies (EASST)
Science and Democracy Network (SDN)
STS Austria
Research Platform Mobile Cultures and Societies, University of Vienna
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