Formation/Cours

This course builds on IR/STS theories, critical security studies, and public policy literatures so that students gain both conceptual depth and practical analytical tools for understanding security and risk in our digital age.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Critically analyze the relationship between technology, security, and risk using multiple theoretical frameworks
2. Evaluate contemporary case studies from both Global North and South perspectives
3. Assess risk and uncertainty in technological governance and policy-making

From biometric welfare systems that control the poor to cryptocurrency networks that challenge state monetary sovereignty, this course explores how technological innovations reshape security paradigms and justice frameworks. In this context, risk and uncertainty constitute fundamental challenges requiring critical analysis of power, justice, and democratic governance in technological societies. More precisely, we will analyse risk examine power dynamics, inequality, and resistance in digital spaces while questioning who benefits from technological ‘solutions’ to social problems and who bears their costs.

This course will provide a dual perspective based on an interdisciplinary approach: First, a practical introduction to digital security actors, practices and objects, and their implications for fundamental rights and societal justice such as privacy, mobility freedom of movement or ethics. Second, a critical exploration of how technology, security, and justice intersect in global politics. Thus, students will engage with multiple dimensions of risk and uncertainty: Epistemic, Technological, Governance, Social and Political Uncertainties.