Sensing In/Security: Sensors as Transnational Security Infrastructures

Sensing In/Security investigates how sensors and sensing practices enact regimes of security and insecurity. It extends long-standing concerns with infrastructuring to emergent modes of surveillance and control by exploring how digitally networked sensors shape securitisation practices.

Contributions in this volume examine how sensing devices gain political and epistemic relevance in various forms of in/security, from border control, regulation, and epidemiological tracking, to aerial surveillance and hacking. Instead of focusing on specific sensory devices and their consequences, this volume explores the complex and sometimes invisible political, cultural and ethical processes of infrastructuring in/security.

Nina Klimburg-Witjes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Science & Technology Studies, University of Vienna. In her work at the intersection of science and technology studies and critical security studies, she explores the role of technological innovation and knowledge practices in securitization processes, with a particular focus on sensors and space technologies. Tracing the entanglements between industries, political institutions, and users, Nina is interested in how visions about sociotechnical vulnerabilities are co-produced with security devices and policy, and how novel security technologies interact with issues of privacy and democracy.

Nikolaus Poechhacker is a researcher at the Institute for Public Law and Political Science, University of Graz. Before his academic life, he worked as an IT professional. In his research, he is studying the relationship between democratic institutions, social order, and algorithmic systems in various domains, bring- ing together perspectives from media theory, science and technology studies, computer science, and sociology. Most recently, he is exploring the impact of algorithmic procedures and digital legal technologies on the legal system.

Geoffrey C. Bowker is Chancellor's Professor and Donald Bren Chair at the School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California at Irvine, where he directs the Evoke Laboratory, which explores new forms of knowledge expression. Recent positions include Professor of and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh iSchool and Executive Director, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara. Together with Leigh Star he wrote Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences; his most recent books are Memory Practices in the Sciences and (with Stefan Timmermans, Adele Clarke and Ellen Balka) the edited collection: Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star. He is currently working on big data policy and on scientific cyberinfrastructure; as well as completing a book on social readings of data and databases. He is a founding member of the Council for Big Data, Ethics and Society.