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Projekte und Positionen im Forschungsverbund

Post Docs

Forschungsthema
Enacting Multiple Publics: Searching for the Public in International Security Practices

Fachrichtungen
International Political Sociology, Security Studies, Political Theory, Technology Studies

Forschungsschwerpunkte
My research interest lie in the field of Critical Security Studies, especially security technology. Empirically the focus lies on encryption technology and surveillance and privacy more general.
 Conceptually, I work with ideas from science and technology studies (STS), thinking about how to translate them into the study of international relations.
A current side-project of mine concerns the issue of fake news and how it is presented as a threat to democracy in the German public discourse.

Biografische Angaben
Contemporary security practices are often characterised by their dispersed character. Security is not confined to high-politics but can be found in everyday practices. Airport security, CCTV or the collection of meta-data are all examples of how security practices shape the everyday life of citizens. While these practices are often taken for granted, we can also observe some resistance against these security practices. Especially the effects of surveillance and data-retention are contested. But these contestations occur often in more remote places: among specialized activist groups, within bureaucracies or other expert circles. A concept of a static public sphere that is bounded to the nation state does not seem to be adequate in this context.
The question is thus how can these contestations be understood as constituting a specific form of 'publicness'? The aim of the project is to develop a vocabulary that can grasp the enactment of multiple publics in the context of security practices. I therefore draw on insights from democratic theory, especially the work from John Dewey and Bonnie Honig to conceptualise these modes of 'publicness'. Empirically, I focus on digitial security and surveillance technologies. Currently, I am particularly interested in forms of resistance and how they can be understood as forms of publicness.

Publikationen im Forschungsverbund

Artikel

Monsees, Linda (2019): Public relations: Theorizing the contestation of security technology. Security Dialogue (50)6 pp.531-546
Monsees, Linda (2018): Uncertainty and Risk in the Discourse on Encryption. Mediatization Studies.2(1)

Buchkapitel

Lindskov Jacobsen, Katja; Monsees, Linda (2019): Co-production. The study of productive processes at the level of materiality and discourse. In: Leese, Matthias and Hoijtink Marijn.eds. Technology and Agency in International Relations.Routledge 24-41
Waever, Ole; Monsees, Linda (2019): “Theory is Technology - Ole Waever in conversation with Linda Monsees” in: Acuto, Michele, Madeline Carr and Carolin Kaltofen. eds. Technologies of International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan.13-22

Monografien

Monsees, Linda (2020): Crypto-Politics. Encryption and Democratic Practices in the Digital Era.Routledge