Andreas Baur is an external PhD candidate at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR). He pursues a PhD on the Politics of the Cloud supervised by Prof Dr Marieke de Goede and Prof Dr Thomas Poell.

Andreas is a research associate at the research area Society, Culture and Technological Change at the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tübingen, Germany. He studies the complex interplay between IT infrastructures and politics/society with a focus on issues of power, autonomy, privacy and technology ethics. Andreas has been working on several projects on (security) infrastructures, privacy and digitalisation funded by the EU, the German Ministry of Education and Research and others. He holds an MA in Peace Resarch/International Politics (Tübingen) and a BA in Political Science and Economics (Tübingen/Guadalajara). His studies were supported through a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German National Academic Foundation).

Andreas is a fellow at the Critical Infrastructure Lab Amsterdam.

More information is available on his profile at the University of Tübingen.

My PhD project on The Politics of the Cloud

1. takes seriously the political nature of cloud infrastructures and their foundational character for digital societies, including the AI trend.
2. focuses on the multiple relations of infrastructural politics and cloud computing, their wider implications for societies, politics and institutions, such as the EU, and the materialisations of power in global politics.
3. engages with current infrastructural cloud projects such as Gaia-X and sovereign cloud initiatives, as well as the trend towards multi- and hybrid clouds.
4. contributes to debates in International Relations/Political Science as well as Science and Technology Studies on IT infrastructures, technology ethics and the governance of complex socio-technical systems.

• ‘Reaching European Stars with American Clouds: Rooting European Digital Sovereignty in Gaia-X’, 10th European Workshops in International Studies, Amsterdam, 12–14 July 2023.

• ‘Governing European Cloud Infrastructures’, 4S/ESOCITE 2nd Joint Meeting, Cholula/Mexico, 7–10 December 2022.

• Invited speaker: ‘Why we need to talk about feminist data protection’, Digital Futures in the Making: Imaginaries, Politics, and Materialities, Hamburg, 14–16 September 2022.

• ‘Cloud infrastructures between global skies and sovereign territories’, EISA 15th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, Athens, 1–4 September 2022.

• ‘GAIA-X: Governing Europe’s Moon-Shot in the Cloud’, ISA 2022 Annual Convention, Nashville (online), 30 March – 2 April 2022.

• ‘Imagined secure European cloud futures’, Making Europe through Infrastructures of In/Security, Vienna (online), 12/13 Nov. 2020.

• Organisation of an workshop on Feminist Data Protection, part of the Forum Privacy, Berlin, 20 November 2019, together with R. Ammicht Quinn, F. Bieker, G. González Fuster, M. Hansen und J. Theilen.

• Organisation of the 2019 conference of the Forum Privacy on ‘Aufwachsen in überwachten Umgebungen – Wie lässt sich Datenschutz in Schule und Kinderzimmer umsetzen?’ (‘Growing up in monitored environments - How can data protection be implemented in schools and child rooms?’.

• ‘The Cloud as a Way to a More Secure Internet – and its Social Effects’, 6th European Workshops in International Studies, Kraków, 27 June 2019.

• ‘The Power of the Cloud at the Horizon of ICT Infrastructures’, ISA’s 60th Annual Convention 2018, Toronto, 27 March 2019.

• ‘Sky full of clouds. Cloud computing and its future political impact’, EISA 12th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, Prague, 13 September 2018.

• ‘What does the cloud do to security?’, ISA’s 59th Annual Convention 2018, San Francisco, 7 April 2018.

• ‘Smart security at airports. Smart for whom?’, 7th Biannual Surveillance & Society Conference, Barcelona, 20–23 April 2016.

• ‘The Power of Cyberspace Centralisation’, 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, Giardini Naxos, 23–26 September 2015.

• Invited participant, Roundtable on protocols, standards and ecosystems by the Open Future Foundation, Amsterdam, 20 June 2023.
• Invited speaker, KI Makerspace on KI und vulnerable Gruppen - dual use von Technik in Migration, Flucht und Vertreibung (AI and vulnerable groups – dual use of technology on migration, refuge and displacement), Tübingen, 25 May 2023.
• Invited talk at the seminar Democracy in the European Union by Niels ten Oever, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 9 May 2023.
• Invited speaker, Summer School of the Cusanuswerk on Cyber war's. Sicherheit in einer digitalisierten Welt (Security in a digitalised world), Regenstauf, 14 August 2018.
• Invited speaker, Nuremberg Dialogue on Technology on Herausforderung: Sicherheit im Cyberspace (the challenge to secure cyberspace), Nuremberg, 21 June 2018.
• Invited speaker (together with Marco Krüger), Specialist conference on Luftsicherheitskontrolltechnik – Technologie und Ausrüstung für die Sicherheit im zivilen Luftverkehr (Aviation security technology – technology and equipment keeping civil air transport secure) organised by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Leipzig, 9 June 2016.

• ‘Gaia-X: This Governance Process is unique in the World’, Interview with Andreas Weiss and Thomas Sprenger of eco – Verband der Internetwirtschaft, Gaia-X Federation Services and dotmagazine, 14 February 2023. 
• ‘Infrastrukturen, Cloud und Governance’ (‘Infrastructures, cloud and governance’). Video summarising my research conducted within digilog@bw. YouTube, 21 December 2022.
• ‘Who can we trust?’ A video interview with me is part of an exhibition at ZKM Karlsruhe, 18 December 2021 – 24 April 2022.
• ‘Was steckt hinter der Cloud? Corona und die Bedeutung von Cloud-Infrastrukturen’ (‘What's behind the cloud? Covid-19 and the importance of cloud infrastructures’, digiloglounge, YouTube interview with Sabine Faller, ZKM, 17 September 2020.
• ‘Warum wir keinen Cyberwar erleben werden’ (‘Why we won't experience a cyber war’), interview with the podcast SWR Aktuell Netzagent, 16 August 2019.
• ‘Smart Data and Smart Cities’, interview with students of the Berufliche Gymnasium St. Klara, Rottenburg, as part of the Ethics Forum on ‘Big Data – Herrschaft der Algorithmen?’ (‘Big Data – Authority of Algorithms?’), 16 January 2019.
• ‘Kunst und Wissenschaft forschen gemeinsam zu Privatheit’ (‘Arts and science work together in a research project on privacy’), article on netzpolitik.org, 3 July 2017.
• ‘Digitale Schlachten’ (‘Digital battles’), interview as part of a radio broadcast of cantaloup.fm, 15 May 2017.
• ‘Smarte Welten im Kapitalismus 2.0’ (‘Smart worlds and capitalism 2.0’, with Marco Krüger et al.), interview as part of a radio broadcast of Deutschlandfunk, 7 October 2016.
• ‘Smart City – Stadt der Zukunft’ (‘Smart city – city of the future’, with Marco Krüger et al.), interview as part of the radio broadcast Salzburger Nachtstudio, Ö1, 21 September 2016’.
• ‘Der Flughafen ist ein symbolischer Ort’ (‘The airport is a symbolic place’, interview with the public service broadcaster SWR, together with Matthias Leese), SWR Landesschau Aktuell Baden-Württemberg, 23 March 2016.

Security in times of modern information technologies (together with Marco Krüger), B.A./M.A. seminar, Institute of Political Science of the University of Tübingen, Summer Semester 2018.