Regine Paul Joins MPIfG

Regine Paul, a political scientist and professor at the University of Bergen, Norway, is joining the MPIfG in the middle of April to take up a position as head of a new research group. “Technology and Statehood” will officially start its work at the beginning of October, exploring articulations of competition statehood in global tech races across time, space, and specific technologies, as well as their social and political implications. In her research, Paul’s interests have covered comparative migration governance and European social policy, risk analysis and regulation, and – in the past five years – the political economy of digital technologies. Her research in these fields is guided by the question of how states negotiate economic, social, and political rationalities, and the discourses surrounding them. Research on Technology and Statehood aims to move beyond conventional economistic, technologically determinist, and Western-centric analyses of digital transformations. Paul instead considers the conflicting rationalities navigated by different states in their tech projects, their material basis, and how global – including colonial and imperialist – relations of power and hierarchy shape these projects to this day. Of particular empirical interest are the state governance of AI, quantum computing, digital twins, and de-extinction biotechnology, not only in Europe but also in postcolonial jurisdictions such as Brazil, India, or Kenya. Paul’s expertise is documented in two recent publications, Handbook on Public Policy and Artificial Intelligence (Elgar, 2024), which she coedited, and The AI Matrix: Profits, Power, Politics (Agenda Publishing, 2026), coauthored with Daniel Mügge and Vali Stan. Regine Paul is also a coeditor of Critical Policy Studies.