 Great. Right. Well, I want to extend a warm welcome to Clemens and Sarah, but also to you, the audience for virtually connecting with us today on our first new voices in global security seminar series of 2022. So happy to have Clemens as the first up. So for those of you who are unaware, the new voices are lunchtime seminar series is King's College London School of Security Studies sponsored series that wants to showcase the expertise and the scholarship across the School of Security Studies, or a particular PhD and postdoc and other early career researchers. Again, so we're so grateful that Clemens has agreed to be a part of this series. If you really enjoy his presentation, which I'm sure you will, you'll have to then check out his blog post that will be forthcoming based on this presentation but maybe maybe a bit more details with the critical military studies journal so that's that will be forthcoming so watch this space. My name is Amanda Chisholm. I am a senior lecturer across the School of Security Studies and researching and teaching on gender and global security. I'm also the chair and organizer of this series. Today, Clemens has will be talking about some of his really great empirical work on from arising from his PhD fieldwork, and the title of this talk is the interdependence of research and border politics. Clemens for those of you who don't know is a researcher at the Austrian Institute of International Affairs and a doctoral student at the University of Vienna funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. And he was just really recently a visiting student here and the Department of War Studies at King's College London from September until just December. And his work in his work Clemens engages with the intersections of politics of border and mobility control and the politics of research and development security security technologies. And today is joined by our esteemed discussant, Dr. Sarah Perret. Sarah is a research associate at the Department of War Studies working on an economic research council project security flows in acting border security in the digital age political lives from are of data forms flows and frictions. And in this project, Sarah studies the transformation of knowledge who practices of digital insecurity at borders and the effects of datification on EU border security practices. Beyond this Sarah is taught in several French universities and at Georgetown University as well and she's also been a visiting researcher at George Georgetown University be MW Center for the German and European studies during her doctoral studies. And parallel to this, her, her impressive academic CV, she's also been parliamentarian advisor at the French assembly national and a consultant at the World Bank on government and public policies in West Africa, and she's also been a ministerial on equality and social diversity in the minister or ministry of national education higher education research so so grateful that Sarah is able to to be a discussant for Clemens today. Again, warm welcome to you both. Clemens has agreed to talk for roughly 20 ish minutes. And for which after that Sarah will provide some feedback on the paper that Clemens has sent her ahead of time and I'm sure the presentation. In the meantime, you the audience if you have any questions comments or whatnot during, you know, just please pop them in the Q&A or the chat box. Once, once Sarah is done providing her comments, we'd open the floor to you to have Clemens respond to those. So warm welcome again to everyone and without further ado Clemens I'm going to hand over the virtual floor to you. All right. Yeah, let me just share my screen quickly. There we go. So, can everybody see it. I think so perfect. All right, yeah so as Amanda already introduced I'm dealing more or less in this talk with the intersections of the politics of research and development and the politics of border security and more or less try to uncover how in security research programs that deal with technologies for border security. Some forms of bordering are reproduced reified. And I want to more or less focus both on my frame my research framework but also on, you know, the empirical findings and the topic and bring this a bit closer to you. And therefore I structure the talk into three major bullet points I would say the first one would be the introduction of the political environment. The second part would focus more on the problem at the station which is means more focusing on my research. And the third one would be a preliminary and analysis of my findings. I say preliminary because I'm just in, you know, the final gasps of my PhD and there is still a lot of final analysis to be done so there, there might still be some new things coming up thus I say preliminary but of course. Yeah, there is. So the first point introducing the political environment. What you can see here on this picture is two examples of technologies that derived out of some form of research that got used at the border and that also became quite critically problem. And I think that's been recognized in the last few years. And I will start actually with the picture on the right hand side which is a sonar cannon that there was a video circulating this I think past year in 2021, where a sonar cannon was used at the big land border to Turkey to deter migrants from crossing the border. You can imagine this in making a really loud sound that is actually deafening and I would say it's a health hazard to deter people from crossing the border. And while this was not developed in an EU funded research program it is still, I think, a good example of seeing what technologies are used at the border and to give you a sense of what is dealt with in this regard and the left one is actually a EU funded security project which was one of those that also get a bit of media attention it's called eye border control and it's mainly focusing on based on artificial intelligence on, you know, it's a lie detector more or less so the border guard in this sense is not a person anymore but it's an artificial intelligence, which asks question which based on the algorithms that are programmed in there should detect if somebody's lying or not and this of course was hugely problematized but this is one of the projects that I think it was funded in Horizon 2020 and then it was largely problematized so yeah just to give you a sense. And to give you another sense is how does the EU see it, see the role of security research in border security and insecurity in general. I have two quotes the first one is from the EU at agenda on security which was issued in 2015 by the Commission which I will not read the entire quote you can probably do this yourself but just to line out the most important thing is that research is essential to keep up to date with security needs so the first sentence is really important but also it contains the problems that are and the thoughts that the imaginations that go in there when you when the EU thinks research as a solution and the word solution comes you come across when you do this research quite often to do to a world of solution. And the other thing is in the second quote which was issued in one of the reports on the implementation of Security Union is how security research is one of the building blocks but also focusing on the competitiveness and on the build up of the European security industry this has been a long endeavor by the European Union. And also in terms of an own security industrial policy which dates back to 2012 and has not been renewed since which I will also address a bit later but so research is more or less following a few objectives in there and I will line this out a bit in the next slide which where I describe now the relevance of research and development in border security and I think that the major relevance of why it is important to look at those processes because the external border and thus external border control. So we always speak of the external border because as you know through Schengen the internal border controls have more or less been stopped and it all focuses on the external border of the Schengen area. And I think that quite a few people are from the UK here so you you're very familiar with that. And it is does struck infrastructure and there is this great body of literature on infrastructure in the border which I think is worth drawing on to. And through a variety of technological systems so and there are two logics that one is more or less surveillance logic which focuses more or less on large scale movement as the EU describes it where the European border surveillance system is the major tool in there, but there is also this more database and biometric way of controlling the border and there is a lot about individualized mobility control with a variety of database and information systems. And there were great talks on those information systems in the in the course of new voices already. So I'm not going to delve too deep into this but just so you know that there is a lot of development in this area going on in terms of new information systems coming up like a travel information authorization system. And as you saw from the quotes before it is research and innovation that is described as paramount on tackling and it's also that those systems need to be again from any use standpoint up to date in order, but there is also this networking of different actors so it's not only industry it's also there is a strong endeavor to bring security practitioners in to make those projects and the products of the projects more usable in the end. And of course there's also a big endeavor to bring in researchers in this to scientifically base those policies and the progress. So where does the research and development then happen the European Union. As you can see on the right side, it is mainly the framework programs the large framework programs where I think we all as an academic community we all touch upon them at some point. And it started with the seventh framework program where really security research was established, and it got more and more institutionalized with horizon 2020 and now with the current horizon Europe program and all in all, you funded security research represents 50% of all security research in the EU with the other 50% mainly being national programs, but not on all member states do have national programs in fact I think it's only six or seven Germany France but also smaller countries like the Netherlands or even Austria do have national security research programs and the budget for border security specific calls it's also is always in a so the calls are always issued in a time span of two to three years so from from 2018 the last horizon 2020 call it was 40 million euro and now for the first horizon Europe calls it 31 million euro for two years, so it's actually been increasing a bit but not that much which also has to be seen in the larger context of the research budget in the EU actually being cut. And so that's that's for the for the large structure so for the smaller more micro level structure there are a lot of projects that get funded in there of course. So those projects are usually large consortia that consists of a four mentioned researchers, security, security practitioners and industry companies work together in those pro projects for a couple of years, mostly it's like three to five year projects in order to derive. Not it's not necessarily one device that comes out there but it can be platforms it can be systems that come that come there it can build on already existing systems. And they follow different technology technological trajectories. What is also there is that those projects are usually they have a policy hook so it's strongly connected now we come to this. Next slide but just to mention this so the project that you can see on the right side they were all more or less viewed with quite a bit of interest by security practitioners also to implement them which made them interesting to look at but I also looked at other projects but just just a few examples. So what makes research and development then political in this sense. As I said, those the calls already that are issued by the Commission, they are connected to strategic and policy goals. You could describe this as a policy driven research but it is important because this reflects also in the proposals that are written and then of course in the in the longer term in the project and in technologies that are. And in the solutions that are developed there that there is always this policy hook where research is actually determined or not not determined but at least partly produced and shaped by by policies. And also the calls are formulated by the input of security actors so what we have what what is quite observable is that all the larger agencies that deal with border security in the European Union and it's mainly Frontex and you Lisa, who deal with this. So what they have established specific research units who do their own research but who are also some sort of connection node for research projects that get funded under the under the framework programs. They do events where they invite project leaders to present their projects and possibly implement and procure them. You can see this and there is an even stronger case which I will come to in a second but it's, it's what is important in there is that this node in the agencies also quite important because secure security acts more on the national base so I don't know. Let's say the Italian coast guard the Romanian border police, the Polish border police are often involved in those consortia as and this is a term that is quite prevalent in policy circles as so called end users, because. So this stems from the desire of the European Union to make the projects more marketable, which is why they bring those so called end users in to improve the usability of the projects which has been a long goal and which has also been a problem in those research programs as I will outline a bit later. And I think the major example of how research and development has even shaped the institutional framework is that within the director general migration home affairs in short teaching home of the European Commission, there is now a specific unit. I think it has been established in 2013 or so, which basically acts as the interface between security and the research domain so this unit more or less is dealing with security research but it is so close to the operational units that they can they communicate on the operational needs of technology research and then communicated to the director general research and innovation who sets up the research programs. So with that being said, how do we problematize this and this is where where my research comes in what did interest me in researching this. It's first intersections of border control and research and development and I feel like there is a mutual constitution of the border as I said, institutions have already been shaped by this by implementing research and establishing research units but also policies do profit, more or less from the available technologies and they are shaped by this and in the end it's also of course the practices the on the ground practices, which are shaped by the available devices and how you could control the border so the border as such is shaped by research and development but also as we know now, research and development is shaped by the politics at the border. The other interest that I have is the role of the different actors in the networks. So what does it mean when security acts and industry work together I mean they have similar interests, but also quite distinguished interest so it's different interest so it's interesting just to look into how this this communication work also with within the project level but also more on a macro political level. Also what I wanted to do is to problematize the and I borrowed this term techno solutionism, which is promoted in the research and development programs because I feel like policymakers rely too strongly on we just innovate and then all the situations of crisis at the border will go away because technology will use this and this connects to a perpetuation of racialization, exclusion, discrimination and violence at the border because if we grasp the border as an inherently racialized and exclusionary and violent tool, of course technologies that emerge out of a specific regime reify those problematic notions. So how can we describe bordering through research and development, again this connects to the technological infrastructure in the border, quoting at the end of the bar with this where the borders everywhere so you could see that the border is in a laboratory the borders in a board room where a project gets done just, you know, to make this clear it's the process of bordering is the interesting thing here and this also happens with, you know, at any stage of the research process. And does the border becomes more of a method and manifesting the board escapes so there is a temporal dimension of the border being at different stages where technologies get developed but also used and then the specialist is there is still a spatial dimension to every border even if we say it's not at the territorial border anymore, there is still a spatialization of this. It's also important to see research and development, not a singular process but a series of practices, because this comes from the policy level where calls are formulated in negotiations to the proposal writing of the researchers to funding decisions to the action development projects. And the policy link I derive from more or less drawing and the concept of socio-technical imaginaries because what interests me there is how the border is imagined in the policies and how the aforementioned solutionism is seen in those imaginaries there is also a strong critical narrative of the imaginaries in there because the imaginaries do necessarily not include the negative impacts of those innovation as a solution to problems, which I think is really important that we problematize and critique research and development and not see it as a tool of modernism so to say. And there we have this very interesting, I would say, how could you say this, it's a bit of a dialectic way on the one hand you want the marketability to the involvement of end users but also the strength of the security industry and I think this is dialectic in the sense that industry basically wants to sell quickly and make money and easily. Quite easily broken down and security practitioners need something to fulfill their tasks and the interesting thing is how is this negotiated and also what are the common imaginaries that emerge out of this network. Because if they cooperate there is clearly something that comes out together in terms of the projects. And as I said, and I think that's the other points can be summed up pretty much in the sense that through this techno solutionism through this view of innovation as a one size fits all solution more or less, it reifies and exacerbates the problematic tendencies of racialization of exclusion of violence. And it's interesting for me to see where this happens and there is this question of power who defines the imaginaries which links to the to the networks, who has the power to formulate the calls so it's more or less looking really into the fields. And, and what goes on there. And therefore it's quite interesting I think to show you how I did it. And how what were my methods so what I tried to do is tracing the different stages of research and development I did not only focus on the projects but I tried to focus on the programs and even on the stage before on how policymakers who have nothing to do with research per se. You research in their policy formulation implementation tasks. So there is a focus on how the practitioners in the field perceive it in their everyday practices. That's more or less what was my interest and what I did for this was more or less analyzing documents for the objectives and from the objectives, to technical imaginaries doing quality field work so doing interviews with a lot of people in different institutions I also tried in the beginning to get into those events that I mentioned before with where the projects get presented to agencies but with this all fell apart a bit. So I did a bit more interviews. And when once I got the data I mapped it to discover the relations between the actors the networks to discover the discursive positions of the actors their positionalities and and to also address the questions of power in the larger arena of research and development in border security to, you know, problematize how this gets those problematic tendencies get really fight. So, just to quickly sum up this I want to give you a preliminary analysis of my findings so what were my preliminary findings. The, and that was really really like the most interesting part of what I found out is that there is a really strong endeavor in strengthening research and development and the programs have been extended. However, the projects are really used and procured. And there are many reasons for that. And there is a saying that's the time frames from research and security just differs so security practitioners would rather procure from the shelf if they need something. There is also often the citation of how the civil industry lacks what the military and the defense industry has which alludes to a strong desire of militarization in this regard. Even if the projects do not materialize in in products in the end are bought by security actors there is still a strong network building between security practitioners and the research slash industry side. So the argument for this is marketability but of course this shapes the entire politics at the border. What I found also interesting is that discrimination racialization are hardly perceived by anyone so it's more or less an absent presence of race. And we're which is a great quote by by a modern jerk, where race is there but it's discursively omitted more or less so nobody talks about it. When you talk to people about fundamental rights issues they tell you about data protection but they do not speak about racial bias, exclusion, and so on. Another thing is that policy has a central role but it's not as dominant as you would assume so I was a bit baffled sometimes by how little researchers involved in the project actually did care for policy, and we're familiar with it because it I think it has more. This shows more that people think it in the calls but then it's not really followed through in the entire project. So what do I make out of this is more or less the disparity of goals and reality in terms of the project uptake in the end in your developer project but nobody actually uses it. There is this question of failure so are those programs actually failing what they want to do or are they successful in something else. And also what I found interesting is that with bringing the security actors, there has been a power shift from the industry to state security actors in the gender setting, because industry now more or less has a diminished role in defining the objectives because security actors have become more powerful and there is quite a bit of skepticism in those security acts towards industry because they don't feel that industry can fulfill what they need. What's also quite interesting in terms of the imaginaries is that those imaginaries they promote European solutions and secure Europe through control, and this reflects in the calls but also in like this strong sense of research and development is not only a program to, you know, provide some tools for security challenges but promote a certain way of European security and this of course has a very colonial, post-colonial and exclusionary vision and also quite militarized vision of course because Europe wants to establish itself as a civil security power in this and globally compete with other regions where there is a lot of security innovation, say Israel, say South Korea or even the US. And what the projects however do is that they perpetuate a specific fashion of bordering so through this policy link although it's not followed through the fact that there is the policies reflecting the calls and the projects are proposed in those calls, it heavily politicizes a process that is more or less perceived as purely technical and, as I said, as a bringer of modern solution and so it's quite, it's also quite of a, you could say, you could question modernism through all of this and I think with this I will conclude and hand over to Sarah. My turn, I hope you can hear me well. So first of all, thank you, Clemens for inviting me to discuss this very interesting work on a such important topic of the role played by the technologization of security practices at the border. I really enjoyed reading this paper because I think it highlights quite well the main issues that are currently at stake regarding border security in the EU, but more broadly in western societies. So focus is on an understated empirical material in my opinion, the EU funded research programs, and I think this study provides important elements to better understand what imaginaries and feed border security perceptions of the EU. So I really enjoy the paper, and also I have to confess I enjoyed this paper also in a more selfish way because it focuses on a topic that interests me a lot. The role of your research and development program which aims to fund diverse innovation projects in Europe. So that is why I find convincing your argument, Clemens, that today in these research programs is very important to better understand how technological innovations contribute to shaping policy and practice at the contemporary EU borders. So, of course, the question is how, and you argue that this is a kind of reciprocal relationship since the development of these new devices through this research programs would both enact and shape border control policies. And to do so you draw on SES, critical security studies and feminist approaches to study more everyday practices rather than exceptional or global practices or policies. And I think that allows you to analyze the projective role of the research and development in policymaking and the kinds of imaginaries are security that are driving both the research program on border security and the EU policy on border control. So starting from this I will try to raise a few questions and comments that are relevant to this paper. I will try to start with your conclusion in your presentation. You presented your first results and this is of course something that I really wanted to ask you more about. I was really curious to see the kind of results you were able to find because the paper was of course the introduction of your thesis. I only had a few elements and one hypothesis that you had starting your research. The first question will be to ask you more about your current result and maybe it will provide you more and more time to detail your results. I was wondering if you find any surprising elements during this investigation and were any of your assumptions confirmed or disconfirmed. And also what kinds of imaginaries since you are using this concept that I also find very interesting. What kinds of imaginaries were you able to identify within this project. And maybe another question in the same topic. I was also wondering if you were able to to observe some surprising and interesting topics. Well, I mean emerging from the your your investigation so that will be my first set of questions. My first set of question equals to my second set of questions that is related to your methodology. You mentioned your your ambition of conducting a situational analysis. There are very interesting methods also quite challenging methods you to apply. And my knowledge on this method is that it is really useful when you have a very diverse empirical materials. You seem to have chosen to analyze interviews policy documents and project reports. And I wonder if this is the most appropriate method here. I understand that you had to to cancel the in person I participant observation because of the current situation. So I think, and maybe it's more common than than a question but if you really think that this is a method that is the best to support your argument, I suggest maybe adding another type of observations. Perhaps by attending or viewing online conferences organized by those research project teams. Either you can find some of them, or eventually you parliament debates on the topic, etc. I think it would. This would provide you with empirical elements that would help you to to make more sense of some of the observations you, you have made from from the documents and the interviews. Regarding your, your field work and interviews you, you, you had the occasion to conduct, I guess, online, but maybe you, you could, you could maybe precise more the condition of those interviews. I also wanted to ask you if you had the chance to interview actors who were directly involved in this research and development projects. And also, I was also wondering which projects. Precisely, did you decide to analyze more specifically here, because it seems that there is a lot of different projects right and if I remember well, they are not necessarily labeled as border security project so I was wondering how you choose this project that you wanted to to to study more precisely. How many projects you were able to identify in your in your as an empirical material here to to to analyze. Yeah. I will stop here on the field work to come back to your central question. Also, in the end, it is the technologies as devices that reshape the borders, or is it the ideology of communism that reshapes border management. And I'm, I'm asking this because I'm, when I was reading your, your, your, your paper, I was, I was thinking of my team that actually work, for example, on borders and migration that you're actually a quote, especially at Greek and Italian borders who observe that at the end of the day technologies play seems to play a small role in terms of border control or border security. They are strict instead the asylum procedures. So, to maybe invite you to reflect more on this. I was also thinking of Karen Cote Boucher's work on customs, I don't know if you had the chance to read this book but she also highlights the frictions that the implementation of new technologies creates. I think it's just getting an improving security and circulation of goods at the Canadian and US border. So, just a couple of example that I think it goes to what you are trying to describe here that that I think could be interesting to to engage with. I have several questions but I don't want to monopolize the discussion so I would choose maybe a last one. Maybe one on something that that surprised me. I will say the almost absence of knowledge. Indeed, the notion of knowledge is barely mentioned here, even though it seems to me to be at the heart of the questions of the imaginaries that are at stake in EU politics and practices of border security. I think you're interestingly started to mention an example that I actually also had the occasion to question previously was my colleague, the case of the role of the researchers involved in those projects. And I think it might be interesting to identify the type of knowledge they are bringing within this imaginaries at stake. So, yeah, I wanted to ask you if that is a deliberate choice. Do you think that is not accurate to your analysis, or do you actually engage with the question of knowledge prediction dissemination later in your thesis. And if yes, how do you do that. I think I will stop here by thanking you again for sharing this work with us. I think you're doing an important work that contributes to better understanding of power relations produced at the border. So, thank you and good luck for the end of your thesis. Wow, that is wonderful engagement. Thank you so much Sarah Clemens before you pick and choose what to respond to now and then you know obviously you can reflect upon all of this as well to saskia had a quick question. And this is more of you know the the research site or the practices that you're describing generally affect all policy oriented research programs and processes and so saskia just is asking you to reflect upon what is specific or especially problematic about the field of border security or not then. So that's another tag on question for you and I'll give the floor to you. Thank you Sarah for the quite extensive comments and they really helped to think this more and I think I'll try to at least address everything in brevity. But I think it should work. So the first question for the photo that you had for the results were there surprising elements. There was actually a lot and because you asked if my assumptions were confirmed or disconfirmed the most of them were disconfirmed which I think was a also that being my PhD research quite revealing that's, and I'm happy that it's the way it worked that I actually sat there after like the first five interviews at it and was like, Hey, this is not what I expected. So, particularly I think in terms of when you read. As you know because you have also worked on this there has not been quite a lot of literature on this before I would say 2020 and I wrote the proposal for this in 2017 2018. So basically what I was relying on to where NGO reports and those NGO reports they are very helpful but they tend to in my opinion overestimate the role of the industry. And then when I talked to policy people and they were like no actually we are not really happy that industries in there that was quite interesting to see and it is also quite, you know, the trajectory how this entire security research program developed not only border security but particularly of course. And this was really, really interesting in seeing how that the power structures are actually a lot different to what I assumed them to be the same actually happened for and I think that was the most surprising element for me is that I thought, you know, there is always this argument that you know EU monies taxpayers money so I thought that those projects would actually, you know, be used in the end, and that one of the major topics was, there is no uptake of them and we have to improve this and this has been you know, more or less the more or less the storyline that's guided me through this was really interesting and also challenged me to think this in you. And I think this reflects also in the question of imaginaries but I think like the major imaginary, the major two imaginaries that I found out where the ones are we can secure the border through technology, which I think is really interesting like, you know this mobility role and we can find that we speaking from from you know you people to you people who told me we could find out who is dangerous who is not by you know biometrics and whatever and improve the database speed and speed up the process which also is quite interesting you know and it is not always fortification in the imaginary it's sometimes it's even acceleration that is highlighted strongly, but it's also this thing of finding European solutions, and I think this also then connects to the question that which I will address in a second. For the methodology. Why I think situational analysis is helpful is particularly for the second set of maps that the methodology provides which is the situation. This is the social worlds and the social arenas maps, which mainly, you know, focuses on where how different actors and different policies and all the elements of the situation interact so this is quite the interesting. I feel like it was the most helpful in actually structuring all those wide elements because it was a field I was not really familiar with in the beginning, and then I delved into it and I was a bit overwhelmed by how much there was and structuring different smaller social worlds and I have a chapter on this later in my thesis so of course this will be addressed. How those different worlds constitute but also interact and where there might be you know where the cross boundaries and stuff like that. I think it was really helpful in this and with, you know, depicting relations and positions in this so this is where I feel like it was the proper methodology to use also I did observe a few online events of projects but I feel like you know a lot gets lost that you could be aware particularly in terms of informal interactions which I think is a huge part of this but anyway I mean I will be able to use them but I do not really see them as a crucial part in my methodology it's just like more or less add up if something interesting comes in there but it's mainly of course the interviews. And this also leads to the question of if I asked actors that are directly involved in project yeah actually a third of my interviews where with actors that were directly involved in there. This election was a bit arbitrary in the beginning, but it was more or less finding out, you know, I started with speaking to policy people and I started to speak into be asking them if they had any best case examples of this also because I was interested. There were a few projects that they mentioned actually and you know from this if policy people talk more about it I felt like there was more relevance to it. Also I tried to you know look on which projects were invited, for example by Frontex to their research and industry days and then contact the projects directly who were involved there. And this made it a bit easier in looking at which projects were found to be interesting and crucial by security actors in order to get the stronger connection there. But that was more or less what helped me choose in which projects of course then there is also the thing in how responsive they were and who actually was the project lead, because it's usually like the project leader that I interviewed. And it depended on the institution if it was easier to get contact or more difficult so quite practical. And then I think I take two questions together the last one, if I'm interested because I think that the question in technology knowledge and the, or the ideology of solutionism that interests me is interesting. Knowledge was a contentious topic for me I didn't really struggle with with trying to get this in and it is still in there so it comes a bit strong in the late chapters, particularly in more analyzing the knowledge is brought in by the non research actors because I find it quite interesting that you know that was also something that everybody in the project told me that they had they were doing their own service with the security actors and security practitioners in order to get their needs so it's more or less they not extract but they they gather the knowledge from the security actors and then, you know, process it in the project so I think like the interesting part in there is the knowledge that comes in from from the security side that then shapes how researchers who are actually you know, regarded as those who produce knowledge they actually don't really produce but rather process it in this regard and their role becomes a bit diminished in producing their own knowledge and critically, you know, engage with knowledge. And it is, I mean, I think the interest the most interesting part for me was to see this ideological element of the innovation and technology as a bringer of solutions for crisis situations for whatever happens at the border we can address with technology I felt like this was interesting and dismantling a bit in showing okay well. This is not only meant to be that but with this we promote this or the EU promotes a certain way of ordering and there it connects so I think this is the most important element but of course this involves the third engagement with the specifics of the because, as I showed in the beginning, when you introduce something like an artificial intelligence border guard lie detector thing. It promotes a certain way that again also connects to the problem at the stations of race of discrimination and speaking of the of the sonar canon, even what violence in this regard so I think that it's still important to engage with the though, because it's not as focused on in the research programs also not overestimate the role because in the end, the politics happen through the calls the politics happen through funding decisions. And the device itself is in this sense, it's it's not just tool, but it's not as productive as it's would be if I analyzed it from a different standpoint so it's not I'm not saying that it's not productive at all, but from my standpoint I feel like it's not interchangeable which device comes out there because it's more or less the the imaginary that drives the project that is the interesting thing that is behind there and if the imaginary is, you know, deceiving and liars more bluntly said, it's quite interesting in seeing how this is addressed but if it's through artificial intelligence or if they find another way, I think this, this is not the major topic but it's more or less the ideology that this is based on and connecting to sasca's question if that it's true policy oriented is for for the entirety of the security research programs and I think not only for the security research programs but for all applied research that happens within the framework programs. What is problematic about the field of border security is first of all the question of border security border control still being a field of national sovereignty more strongly than a lot of other security fields. Because there is a stronger cooperation, for example in counterterrorism or in bio defense but in in terms of border security it's still a nationalism in there, which also goes to procurement which also goes to the way the nation states to do it and this is of course changing with the strengthening of Frontex and Frontex becoming a proper border police more or less but it's still there that nation states do insist on their decision making in there it's also that the border has specific characteristics in terms of how it's being regarded as a secure as an object to secure and to control and it interconnects with topics of mobility as we I mean we have seen this the right now I think COVID has shown us the way that borders are very much there and how on how many grounds movement and mobility can be controlled and hindered. So, I think that this connection is really interesting and also I mean it's just, it's a bit of a case study also it's just I selected it because of those reasons that it's, there is this impediment through the strong nationalism in there which is a strong connection to mobility which brings this ambiguity of on the one hand accelerate mobility for white white white collar workers and leave racialized migrants out there, which is stronger visible there as let's say for example in counterterrorism and of course counterterrorism is also a field where this emerges. And, as we all know, border security is connected also to issues of counterterrorism in this regard so. But yeah and also it's it's because border security is still in this weird on this weird boundary between military and policing, and I feel like this is also quite interesting that in some points there are military forces but in some points it's just the police that is involved and this also means something something more for internal security purposes and I think in looking at the border we can learn a lot about internal security and policing in general which I feel also is quite important. That's so wonderful Clemens and we're out of time, but I just want to quickly ask as my role of chair to you is thinking about. Really, what is your hope for your research like what what do you want, who do you want to read your work what do you want to get at that's probably really tough question so. But who do you want you to read your work and what would be your biggest hope arising from your research and your broader contribution. Getting to my PhD. No. No, of course I mean the, the. I think it's worthwhile and I think that what's interested me is in looking at only how technologies are used but actually where did it come from. It's always this product this decided production, which is also of course a very political economy part in there so I think that it opens up and I hope to achieve this to open up a further discussion about different elements of this about, you know, of course also the political economy of this all which I do not address at all because I think that which this would just lead to to overboard and to to, you know, it would be overboarding in a sense. But also in terms of, you know, how through different pro so when we look at at border security we have those imaginaries so to say off, you know, the border guard, and there and I, I feel like it's interesting to and there are other people who have a bit of work on that but to systematically address this and to see research is not only a process in the laboratory, research is not only an administrative process but it's this intersection of administrative and doing research so there is a lot of topic of topics that intersect in there and this interconnection of politics with something that is regarded as deeply decides so opening up the discussion there and just showing okay well this is there, we have not really looked at this as academic community we recently just started looking at this. And there is a growing body of literature and and I think that this moves into a good direction in opening up the, the different aspects of what is addressed there. And it's also, you know, questioning in what is done at another another dimension at the EU border that I feel like is going into the emphasis the critical dimension of the research which I feel is just going wrong, relying on this. It's just developed technologies it's going better and it's just exacerbates any problem that there is and it's discriminates against people on the move, and puts them in jeopardy so I think that there is also this very critical element to it, which people, particularly in this in this field that I talked to often do not really, I think, reflect sufficiently upon. So also shed light a bit on this.