Ass.-Prof. Dr. Nina Klimburg-Witjes, MA

Tenure Track Professorship: Infrastructures, Innovation and Global Politics

FUTURESPACE

Tel.:+43-1-4277-49610

eMail: nina.witjes@univie.ac.at 

Consultation Hours:

to be arranged by email


Teaching: Link ufind

Biography

Nina's work centres on the complex and dynamic relationships between infrastructures, innovation, and shifting geopolitical landscapes. Her research employs qualitative, empirical methods to develop a grounded understanding of the interplay between global politics and technological transformations. Particularly, her work focuses on outer space governance, exploring topics such as cooperation, militarization, and environmental justice, as well as the nexus between security infrastructures, (digital) technologies and innovation discourses.

In 2022, Nina Klimburg-Witjes was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project "FUTURESPACE" The project uses the European Ariane 6 rocket as a case study to investigate the complex connections between large-scale infrastructures, European integration practices, and envisioned space futures in the new space race. Methodologically, Nina and her team will conduct an interdisciplinary ethnography, linking social science and aerospace engineering to explore the material, political, and imaginative dimensions of space infrastructures and their politics.

Nina is an active member of the international STS community. She regularly organizes panels at leading STS conferences and participates in various international academic networks and societies. She holds elected positions on the Council of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Austrian Academy of Science (ÖAW) Young Academy, co-founded the international network for the Social Studies of Outer Space (SSOS) and is a member of the International Network on Security and Technology in Outer Space.

Nina Klimburg-Witjes received her PhD in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from the Technical University of Munich in 2017 (MCTS) and was co-leader of the research group "Science, Technology and Security" of the Engineering Responsibility Lab. She was a visiting researcher at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) in Vienna, a research fellow at the Austrian Research Foundation for International Development (OEFSE) as well as the Austrian Institute for International Policy (OIIP), and a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology at the Albert Ludwig University Freiburg.

Main Research Interests

  •  Imaginaries and Politics Outer Space
  • Infrastructures of In/Security
  • Technology, innovation and Securitization 
  • Social studies of outer space and future visions of Earth-Space relations,
  • Science, technology and international relations 
  • Fieldwork in contexts of secrecy 

 

 

Recent Publications

Contextualizing Security Innovation: Responsible Research and Innovation at the Smart Border?

Autor(en)
Nina Klimburg-Witjes, Frederik Hüttenrauch
Abstrakt

Current European innovation and security policies are increasingly channeled into efforts to address the assumed challenges that threaten European societies. A field in which this has become particularly salient is digitized EU border management. Here, the framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has recently been used to point to the alleged sensitivity of political actors towards the contingent dimensions of emerging security technologies. RRI, in general, is concerned with societal needs and the engagement and inclusion of various stakeholder groups in the research and innovation processes, aiming to anticipate undesired consequences of and identifying socially acceptable alternatives for emerging technologies. However, RRI has also been criticized as an industry-driven attempt to gain societal legitimacy for new technologies. In this article, we argue that while RRI evokes a space where different actors enter co-creative dialogues, it lays bare the specific challenges of governing security innovation in socially responsible ways. Empirically, we draw on the case study of BODEGA, the first EU funded research project to apply the RRI framework to the field of border security. We show how stakeholders involved in the project represent their work in relation to RRI and the resulting benefits and challenges they face. The paper argues that applying the framework to the field of (border) security lays bare its limitations, namely that RRI itself embodies a political agenda, conceals alternative experiences by those on whom security is enacted upon and that its key propositions of openness and transparency are hardly met in practice due to confidentiality agreements. Our hope is to contribute to work on RRI and emerging debates about how the concept can (or cannot) be contextualized for the field of security-a field that might be more in need than any other to consider the ethical dimension of its activities.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung
Externe Organisation(en)
Technische Universität München
Journal
Science and Engineering Ethics
Band
27
Anzahl der Seiten
19
ISSN
1353-3452
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00292-y
Publikationsdatum
2021
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
502014 Innovationsforschung, 506004 Europäische Integration, 509025 Technikforschung, 509024 Sicherheitsforschung
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Health(social science), Health policy, Management of Technology and Innovation, Issues, ethics and legal aspects
Link zum Portal
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/contextualizing-security-innovation-responsible-research-and-innovation-at-the-smart-border(0ee11038-7960-4016-9997-253927e49721).html