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Technical University of Munich
Technical University of Munich

Dr. Paul Trauttmansdorff

Postdoc

Philosophy and History of Science and Technology

Ethical Data Initiative

I completed my first university studies in Philosophy (BA) at the University of Vienna and Socioeconomics (BSc) at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, followed by a MSc 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 STS Department 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 the digitization of Europe’s mobility governance. During my Phd, I received the Marietta-Blau Scholarship from Austria’s Agency of Education and Internationalisation.

After completing my PhD (2022), I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies at the University of Bologna, where I was part of the ERC StG Project “Processing Citizenship – Digital registration of migrants as co-production of citizens, territory and Europe” (PI: Prof. Pelizza). In October 2023, I became a Fellow at the European New School of Digital Studies of the European University Viadrina, and subsequently worked as a postdoc at the Chair for Sociology of Technology.

In October 2024 I joined TUM’s Chair of Philosophy and History of Science and Technology (Prof. Sabina Leonelli) and the Ethical Data Initiative (EDI).

  • Imaginaries of data/datafication
  • Data Infrastructures and Practices
  • Technoscientific controversies
  • Borders and Migration Studies
  • Infrastructures and (In)Security

  • Paul Trauttmansdorff. 2024. The Digital Transformation of the European Border Regime. The Powers and Perils of Imagining Future Borders. Bristol: Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529235227.
  • Klimburg-Witjes, Nina, and Paul Trauttmansdorff, eds. 2023. Technopolitics and the Making of Europe. Infrastructures of Security. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003267409.
  • Klimburg-Witjes, Nina, and Paul Trauttmansdorff. 2023. “Making Europe through Infrastructures of In/Security. An 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. 2023. “The Fabrication of a Necessary Policy Fiction: The Interoperability ‘Solution’ for Biometric Borders.” Critical Policy Studies 17 (3): 428–46. https://doi.org/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 and Human Values 48 (3): 635–62. https://doi.org/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: Unmaking and Remaking Secrecy in Field Research.” Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences 3 (2): 168–97. https://doi.org/10.1163/25903276-bja10039.
  • 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.

My research, writing, and review activities have mostly centered on

  • the imaginaries and practices of datafication, particularly their impact on border and mobility regimes;
  • the governance, maintenance and repair work of (data) infrastructures;
  • the use of biometrics across various domains, and their wider social, political, and ethical implications.

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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