Here is an overview of the courses I am teaching and taught in the past
>>>> CURRENT COURSES
Algorithmic Security Politics (Graduate Seminar)
From regulating biometric borders to powering killer unmanned drones and autonomous weapons, artificial intelligence is in the process of revolutionizing the global politics of international security. The aim of this course is to answer two main questions: First, what exactly are these current developments? Distinguishing fact from fiction, it aims at providing students an empirical account of these technological developments and their impact on contemporary politics of security. Second, when not only humans, but also technologies make the decisions, how can we theorize agency, consciousness and responsibility? The course thus introduces students to new developments in theories of political science and international relations and their dialogue with adjacent fields such as science and technologies studies and critical data studies.
Actors in World Politics (Undergraduate Lecture)
This course introduces students to the study of actors in international relations. Mainstream approaches to international politics have theorized the international as a space composed essentially of states. While addressing the central question of state formation and domination in world politics, this course will give the keys to understand the complexity and diversity of the contemporary international, composed among others, of NGOs, diasporas, pirates, mercenaries, transnational hacktivist and terrorist networks. It will conclude by assessing the possibilities and limits of a cosmopolitan society.
>>>> PAST COURSES (Selected)
Visual World Politics (Masters Thesis Seminar, 2019-2020), with the support of a NWA Comenius Grant
Tahrir square mobile phone videos, ISIS propaganda productions, Youtube recruitment or Facebook live mass shootings: We increasingly experience world politics through audio-visual media. Yet our research and teaching of international relations (IR) has often ignored this evolution, confining it to traditional text-based analysis and passive media literacy. This course proposes to challenge our knowledge of IR by analyzing the visual dimension of international politics and offering a reflection based in visual practice as research methods. Over the course of the seminar, two main activities will be carried out in parallel. First, the instructor and students review and discuss practice-based projects that explore the sensorial (thus not only textual, but also visual, auditive) dimensions of world politics, with prominent in-depth case studies. This will be carried out by drawing on the theoretical literature on visuality in international relations, as well as the film practice of figures such as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Errol Morris, Trinh T Minh-Ha, Harun Farocki, Hito Steyerl, or the Forensic Architecture project. Second, students will engage in practical exercises about alternative “ways of knowing” (experiential, practical, presentational, propositional) through practice-based experimentation with filmmaking tools and theoretical discussions in a tutored, collaborative environment. No prior knowledge of filmmaking is required.
Dynamics of International Organization (Graduate Seminar, 2016-2019)
This seminar explores various ways to understand and explain international organization – in other words, “what makes the world hang together” (Ruggie 1998) despite the absence of a world government. This includes various understandings of why and how states and other transnational actors develop rules and organizations to govern world politics, how and when these rules and organizations shape the behaviour of state and non-state actors and thus the management of global challenges, and how patterns of international organization interact with power transitions and other forms of global change. We will only discuss the mandates, structures, functions and evolution of particular international organisations (with an ‘s’ at the end) when needed to understand the dynamics of international organization (without an ‘s’).
Preventing Terrorism in Multicultural Europe (Graduate Seminar, 2015-2017)
Why do people decide to kill for political ideas? What can be done to prevent that from happening? Are counter-terrorist policies efficient? What are their “secondary consequences” in terms of discrimination and stigmatisation, in particular in Europe’s multicultural societies? This seminar will explore these pressing issues by looking at theoretical and empirical and the policy sides of these questions. Students will be acquire the critical skills to make sense of contemporary debates on terrorism, foreign fighters, mass surveillance or Islamophobia.
International Security (Undergraduate Lecture, 2014-2019)
Security is not only a central concept of International Relations; it has taken an ever-increasing role in our everyday lives. The concern for collective security has been at the center of the creation of international institutions such as the United Nations, NATO or the European Union. But security is also invoked in the checks at the airport, in the introduction of biometric identity documents and in the proliferation of CCTVs. Security is both what democracies argue they provide their citizens with, and what dictatorships invoke to repress their populations. So what do we mean when we speak about security? Who and what is the object of security, and is security necessarily a common “good”? Has the state security the same value as human security? Should we balance liberty and security? Is there such a thing as the security of a nation, a community or an identity? Traditional security studies typically focus on inter-state relations, discussing issues of nuclear proliferation, deterrence and balance of power. While this course will not ignore these issues, the emphasis will be on approaches that question the traditional assumptions of state-centered theories. The course will articulate theoretical discussions (what is security, what is “critique”?) with detailed case studies, addressing among other issues, international migration and border controls, the impact of 9/11, terrorism and counter-terrorism, technologies of security and surveillance (drones, biometrics, CCTVs, databases, internet surveillance), the development-security nexus, the military-industrial-media-entertainment network (war games) and environmental security. The course will conclude on the ethical and political implications of thinking critically about security, and on the possible articulations of theory and practice.