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Chair for Sociology of Technology

Dr. Silvan Pollozek


Postdoctoral Researcher

Contact details

pollozek[at]europa-uni.de

Office: CP 118a
Office hours: By appointment (send me an Email)

Research Areas

  • Science and Technology Studies (STS)
  • (Post-) Actor-Network Theory
  • Digital Infrastructures of Europe
  • Technologies of Migration and Border Control
  • Qualitative & Ethnographic Methods

Curriculum Vitae


Silvan Pollozek is scientific employee at the Chair for Sociology of Technology and member of the Science & Technology Studies group at ENS. After studying cultural studies at the University of Leipzig (2008-2011) and sociology and gender studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (2011-2014), he was a PhD candidate at the Digital/Media/Lab at the Munich Center for Technology in Society (2015-2020).

Silvan's research lies at the intersection of science and technology studies, critical migration, borders and security studies. He focuses on technologies of migration and border control, on data-oriented civil society engagement in the realm of migration, on the techno-politics of bureaucratic reordering, and on the co-production of infrastructures and European polities. Silvan is interested in actor-network and practice theory, as well as in flat methodologies and qualitative methods of vast socio-technical networks.

Currently, Silvan does research on the digitalization of asylum administrations, on data activism, and on interoperability. In his PhD project, he conducted a multi-sited ethnography of the information infrastructure of Frontex operations and worked out the architectures and practices that (re)order the exchange of data across state and EU-agencies, the production of knowledge on migratory phenomena and populations, and the network of security actors.

Silvan is the co-founder of the independent and international network STS-MIGTEC that brings together scholars at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and critical migration, security and border studies by organizing lecture series, conferences, publications and research projects.

Selection of recent publications


Pollozek, Silvan & Passoth, Jan-Hendrik (2023) Provisional by design. Frontex data infrastructures and the Europeanization of migration and border control. In: Science as Culture.

Pollozek, Silvan & Leese, Matthias (2023) Not so fast! Data temporalities in law enforcement and border control. In: Big Data & Society. (open access)

Pollozek, Silvan (2020) Mapping European Border Control: On Small Maps, Reflexive Inversion and Interference. In: Social Inclusion. Special Issue “Method as Border: Articulating ‘Inclusion/Exclusion’ as an Academic Concern in Migration and Border Research in Europe”. (open access)

Pollozek, Silvan (2020) Turbulences of speeding up data circulation. Frontex and its crooked temporalities of ‘real-time’ border control. In: Mobilities, Special Issue on Time and Normativities. (open access)

Pollozek, Silvan & Passoth, Jan-Hendrik (2019) Data Collection and the Logistics of Migration. In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Special Issue on Data and Migration. (open access)