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

The Security-Innovation Nexus in (Geo-)Political Imagination

Author(s)
Christian Haddad, Dagmar Vorlicek, Nina Klimburg-Witjes
Abstract

Security and innovation have become increasingly entangled at the level of political rationalities, imagination, and material practice, forming what we conceptualise as the ‘nexus of security-innovation’. The extension of and various shifts in this nexus merit critical attention, as it engenders the emergence of new technopolitical issues, conflicts, and novel sets of actors involved. This article constitutes both an Introduction and an individual contribution to a Special Issue that examines recent shifts in the security-innovation nexus and its relation to geopolitical imaginations. Here, we propose to conceptualise the nexus along three lines – as an empirical phenomenon, a set of problems confronting security actors, and as an analytical approach. We then map the tensions between security and innovation rationalities before introducing the contributions to this Issue and their individual approaches to studying the security-innovation nexus. We conclude by discussing how the ‘innovationization’ of security reshapes security practices, co-constitutes new actors, and restructures the spaces – imagined and actual – in which they operate.

Organisation(s)
Department of Sociology, Department of Science and Technology Studies
Journal
Geopolitics
Volume
29
Pages
741-764
No. of pages
24
ISSN
1465-0045
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2024.2329940
Publication date
03-2024
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
506007 International relations, 509017 Social studies of science
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Geography, Planning and Development, Political Science and International Relations
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/83abc4b8-9e54-4391-8056-0b3a581cccb6