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 implications. More specifically, I am interested in how data is produced, valued, and circulated, and how these practices shape forms of knowledge and governance in areas such as security, surveillance, and medicine.
I completed my undergraduate studies in Philosophy (BA) at the University of Vienna and Socioeconomics (BSc) at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. I subsequently pursued a master’s degree in Political Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I began my doctoral studies in Science and Technology Studies at the STS Department of the University of Vienna, under the supervision of Ulrike Felt, and as a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. My research focused on sociotechnical imaginaries of future borders and their influence on the construction of European databases for migration control. During my doctoral studies, I was awarded the Marietta Blau Scholarship by the Austrian Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD) and funded by the Austrian Ministry of Education.
After completing my PhD, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bologna, where I was part of the ERC-funded project Processing Citizenship – Digital registration of migrants as co-production of citizens, territory and Europe, led by Annalisa Pelizza. In October 2023, I became a Postdoctoral Fellow at the European New School of Digital Studies at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), and subsequently worked as a researcher at the Chair of Sociology of Technology under Jan-Hendrik Passoth.
Since October 2024, I have been part of the research group at Sabina Leonelli’s Chair of Philosophy and History of Science and Technology at TUM and I am a member of the Ethical Data Initiative, where I serve as an Education Lead (https://ethicaldatainitiative.org).
I am currently also a Friedrich Schiedel Fellow at the TUM Think Tank, where I investigate the development and use of medical faces through facial recognition technologies. The project is titled Coding Faces in Medicine: Exploring the Societal and Ethical Challenges of Facial Recognition Technology in Medicine and Healthcare (website: https://tumthinktank.de/en/project/how-do-algorithms-read-and-diagnose-the-human-face).
Meine Forschungsinteressen:
- Data Imaginaries and data journeys
- 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.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2026. "Borders and Surveillance." In R. Fouché (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society (online edn). Oxford Academic. doi:10.1093/9780197852712.003.0007
Gorrieri, Laura., Leonelli, Sabina. and Paul. Trauttmansdorff. 2026. "Between explaining and understanding: Rethinking AI explainability in medical diagnostics." Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society 2, e10: 1–6. doi:10.1017/cfc.2026.10028,
Trauttmansdorff, P. 2025. "Against interoperability? Terrains of technopolitical contestation and the
remaking of EU border infrastructure." Big Data & Society 12(2): 1–15. doi:10.1177/20539517241307909.
Trauttmansdorff, P., and C. Loschi. 2025. "Interoperability and the multiple modes of ordering in
Europe’s digital border regime." International Migration 63(3): 1–17. doi: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:10.1080/19460171.2022.2147851
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. doi: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
Non-peer-reviewed Publications (book chapters and articles)
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. Forthcoming September 2026. "Digital Bordering as a Bio-Machine. ‘Europe’ and its Organism of Border Control." In Ceccorulli, Michela (ed.) The Revealing Power of Borders in the ‘geopolitical moment.’ The European Union and the Movement of People. 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. Liverpool: 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. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Kim M. Hajek. 2025. "Data shadows: When data become tangible, material and visual." Patterns 6(3): 1–3 DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2025.101206 [Essay].
Hajek, K.M., Trauttmansdorff, P., Leonelli, S., Guttinger, S., and S. Milano. 2025. "Responsible and Resilient Data: The Ethical Data Initiative." IEEE Computer 58(4): 95–99. DOI: 10.1109/MC.2024.3522696.
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
Reports, Reviews, Blog Posts, Media
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Silvia Milano. "Inside the Ethical Data Initiative: research, data and trust." SCIROS Big Open Science Podcast, Interview, 8 May 2026. https://sciros.hypotheses.org/2775.
Leonelli, S., Erdem, K., Gleber, A, Glitza, O., Hajek, K.M., Laukes, M., Milosch, N., Rehman, F., Sindel, L., Trauttmansdorff, P., and N. Uribe. 2026. "From Data to Score: Prospects for AI in African Fintech (Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria)." An Ethical Data Initiative Report, Technical University of Munich. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18495890 [Published Data Clinic Report].
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2025. "AI-driven diagnostics promise to transform healthcare, but they also raise questions about accuracy, bias, and accountability." 20 November 2025. TUM Think Tank. Video Interview. Available at TUM THINK TANK LinkedIn.
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
Hajek, Kim M., Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Sabina Leonelli. 2025. "Understanding Misinformation." International Symposium, 9 December 2024. 4S Backchannels. 4sonline.org/news_manager.php [Blog Post].
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. DOI: 10.23987/sts.126958.
Loschi, Chiara, Olivieri, Lorenzo, Pelizza, Annalisa, Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Wouter Van Rossem. 2023. "The Processing Citizenship Final Conference: A Collective Report." Processing Citizenship. processingcitizenship.eu/the-processing-citizenship-final-conference-a-report/
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2021. "Hidden Borders." Tumult, Podcast Interview, 16 April 2021. https://anchor.fm/tumult/episodes/Hidden-Borders-ek9qa1.
Tecnoscienza | Italian Journal for Science and Technology Studies: Associate Editor
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)
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
Research Data Alliance
Early Career Award 2023, Austrian Association for Science and Technology Studies, for outstanding publications by young scholars in Science and Technology Studies.
Sowi:doc Award 2022, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna, for outstanding research contributions in the framework of the doctoral thesis.
Hobhouse Memorial Prize 2015, London School of Economics and Political Science, for the best overall performance with Distinction in MSc Political Sociology.