CCSS Event: Sociotechnical systems and ecologies of knowledge production

Welcome to Cardiff University's Centre for Conflict, Security and Societies first event of 2025: Sociotechnical systems and ecologies of knowledge production! Join us online for a fascinating discussion on how technology and society intersect to shape the way knowledge is produced. Don't miss out on this opportunity to hear about the latest research by the early career scholars of the newly launched ST/IR Collective. Register now to be part of this engaging Hybrid event!

Description: Sociotechnical systems and ecologies of knowledge production

Large technical systems, ranging from nuclear weapons to digital technologies, have significantly reshaped global politics, influencing various aspects of governance, communication, and conflict. The news is awash with stories that blame the technology or the people wielding them for being self-evidently risky or threatening. Yet this is only one side of the story. It doesn't account for how in/security is the product of interaction between technologies with people, processes and organisations. At the same time, global politics are also shaping how we use and understand those technologies. We need analytical and methodological approaches that can question some of the taken-for-granted assumptions that animate a lot of these debates. Appreciating how these systems function together helps us visualize the big picture behind contemporary technological ecosystems, including how in/security is produced.

The ST-IR Research Collective aims to tell more of this other side of the story. With research primarily drawing on social science methodologies, ethnographic accounts, critical security studies and post-positivist approaches, and researchers based around the world including here at Cardiff University, our Collective was established to provide a venue for the next generation of scholars to continue the productive debates between Science and Technology Studies and International Relations.

In addition to introducing and launching the group’s new website, this panel discussion will introduce the research of members of the newly launched ST-IR Research Collective. Panellists will convene around the theme of how ecological approaches to knowledge production can advance understanding about technological in/security, and how expert knowledge about those systems is produced.

Chair: Dr Johanna Rodehau-Noack (Harvard)

Discussant: Dr Clare Stevens (Cardiff)

Presentation titles:

Clare Stevens: ‘Invisible Technicians’ as Agents of Technological Change: Engineers and Maintainers as/at the interfaces of secrecy infrastructures

Lilly Muller: Algorithmic security: beyond Opacity and shifting security logics of ‘mechanised’ violence

Clara Jammot: Avoiding the Black Box: How Online Communities Can Shed Light On Social Media Algorithms

Laura Meyer: Regulatory Power Beyond the Brussels Effect: How European Regulations Shape Global Cloud Infrastructures (Working Title)

Cameron Hunter: The role of technology in social ritual: the case of the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force.

Bios for the ST/IR Collective:

Dr Cameron Hunter is a Researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where he contributes to the EU-funded project RITUAL DETERRENCE. His research interests are the intersection of international security and technology, with an emphasis of nuclear weapons and outer space. Additionally, he has spent time as a UK Civil Servant, as a research fellow at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and is a member of the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues Mid Career-Cadre. Publications that have featured his work include the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Space Policy, and Wired, among others.

Clare Jammot is a PhD student in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London whose research examines the ties between international security and technology, with a particular focus on the nexus between algorithms, ontological security, and extremism. Her thesis explores how algorithms influence perceptions of self and of security in extremist masculinist online communities, questioning the way identity and community are formed online. Clara has also worked for the European Cyber Security Organization (ECSO) and with consultancy firms researching the digital transformation of business and society and peacebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Yingtao Li is a PhD researcher from King’s College London. She is interested in how security threats emerge and how securitized threats respond to security claims. Drawing on Critical Security Studies as well as Science and Technology Studies, her PhD project examines how Chinese tech giants respond to securitization claims enacted by the government. She hopes to ask a bigger question about tech giants’ roles in digital governance through her doctoral project. Currently, she is a visiting scholar at the Manchester China Institute. Prior to her PhD, she had gained professional experience working in the tech industry and for different news outlets.

Laura Meyer is a PhD researcher at the European New School of Digital Studies of the European-University Viadrina, Germany. Her research interest lies in the governance of digital infrastructures & technical standardization from an IR perspective, with a focus on the policies of the European Commission. In the course of her PhD studies, she spent time as a visiting researcher at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Besides her academic career, she gained experience in public policy, including the German Federal Foreign Office and the German Federal Parliament.

Dr Lilly Pijnenburg Muller joined KCL as a Lecturer in Security Studies in 2024 after working in the Science and Technology Studies department at Cornell University as a Fulbright scholar in 2022-2023. She is an interdisciplinary researcher in critical security studies and science and technology studies (STS) with interests in technology, the politics of (in)security and power. She has been contributing to a new research agenda of critical cybersecurity and on science and technology studies and security studies. Muller is also a guest research at the Peace Institute of Oslo (PRIO). She has previously worked at the Oxford martin School of future research and the Norwegian Institute of Internatioanl Affairs (NUPI).

Dr Johanna Rodehau-Noack is the International Security Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Security and Cooperation, and an incoming Assistant Professor of International Politics and Security at Fordham University. Her research focuses on the idea that we can harness science and technology to address social and political issues, including hard and protracted problems such as war. Combining classic IR theory, critical security studies, and insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), she investigates how ‘war’ is turned into a governable and controllable issue through quantification and formalization.

Dr Clare Stevens is a Lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University, where she is also a co-chair of the Centre for Conflict, Security and Societies. Her research sits at the interfaces of Critical Security Studies and STS and is concerned with looking at the controversies and politics of defining “cybersecurity,” including what those political efforts of definition can teach us more broadly about security, secrecy, and technologies in contemporary international security. Her current research interests concern government secrecy in cyber operations, and putting them into historical and grand strategic context by examining signals intelligence practices of the 20th century.

Event Venue

Online