What is...Technology in IR?

Episode 19

Why should IR scholars pay attention to new technologies, big data, and algorithms? In this episode, we are joined by Claudia Aradau, Professor of International Politics at King's College London, who unpacks the significance of digital technologies for practices of governance. In conversation with Felix Berenskötter (SOAS University of London), Professor Aradau shares her research into the datafication of border security, the operation of algorithms in producing identities and controversies around them. They discuss the importance of a critical and interdisciplinary approach that captures what these new technologies do, who uses them and to what effect. Tune in to this episode exploring the transformative potential and the complexities of technological innovation for the study of IR, shedding light on the impact of algorithmic assemblages on contemporary global politics.

Professor Claudia Aradau

Aradau, Claudia & Blanke, Tobias (2022): Algorithmic Reason. The Government of Self and Other. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

SECURITY FLOWS (‘Enacting border security in the digital age: Political worlds of data forms, flows and frictions’), Consolidator Grant funded by the European Research Council (2019-2024) Further Reading:

Coward, M. (2006). Against anthropocentrism: The destruction of the built environment as a distinct form of political violence. Review of International Studies, 32(3), 419-437. doi:10.1017/S0260210506007091

Jacobsen, K. (2021). Biometric data flows and unintended consequences of counterterrorism. International Review of the Red Cross, 103(916-917), 619-652. doi:10.1017/S1816383121000928

Bourne, M., Johnson, H., & Lisle, D. (2015). Laboratizing the border: The production, translation and anticipation of security technologies. Security Dialogue, 46(4), 307–325. https://doi-org.sussex.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/0967010615578399

Machold, Rhys (2018): Reconsidering the laboratory thesis: Palestine/Israel and the geopolitics of representation. Political Geography, Volume 65, Pages 88-97, ISSN 0962-6298, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.04.002.

Edler Duarte, Daniel (2022): The Making of Crime Predictions. Sociotechnical Assemblages and the Controversies of Governing Future. Crimehttps://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/14261

Benjamin, Ruha (2019): Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge, UK: Polity.