About
Research topic
Knowledge production, cybersecurity expertise, incident response.
Shifting Infrastructures of Power: repurposing knowledge and configuring maintenance in cybersecurity governance
This project draws from Science, Technology & Society (STS) studies to explore the constitutive character of security expertise in stabilising both technical and knowledge infrastructures underpinning cybersecurity. In this regard, I am both concerned with those that maintain the security, stability and resilience of networked and the politics that are often concealed or encoded into the everyday interactions of expert security communities with governments in the management of networks. I depart from Foucault’s "micro-physics of power" (1979) and thus from the understanding of power as exercised through "dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functionings; that one should decipher in it a network of relations, constantly in tension" (1979:26) to situate intrinsic tensions that permeate the mundane incident response security operations. Thus, this project is not only committed to revealing infrastructures, but exposing key exercises of power embedded in the stabilisation (or breakdown) of security of networked systems. Situated a context of emerging regulation of data flows and critical infrastructures, stalemate in international cybernorms development and confusion over responsibilities in national cybersecurity governance, this project is thus concerned with the investigation of the ‘emergence’, rather than ‘existence’, of contemporary forms of power through the analysis of national Computer Incident Response Teams (nCSIRT).
Supervisors
Prof. Robin Mansell & Dr. Jean-Christophe Plantin
Biography
Louise Marie Hurel is currently pursuing her PhD in Data, Networks and Society at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) researching technical security expertise, emerging security epistemologies, cybersecurity governance, and incident response. In 2017, Louise Marie concluded her MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society) from the LSE (distinction), where she studied the governmentality of IoT Platforms – that is, relationship between big tech companies and technical architectures in shaping security. Prior to this, she finished her BA in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (distinction), having been awarded for her dissertation "Cybersecurity and Internet Governance: Two Competing Fields".
For more than five years, Louise Marie has continuously worked in the intersection between Internet governance and cybersecurity communities of practitioners. She has actively engaged in national, regional and international negotiations (track 1.5 and 2) and fora in both fields. Louise Marie leads research and cyberpolicy engagement at Igarapé Institute’s Cybersecurity and Digital Liberties Program, which includes, but is not restricted to projects related to the implementation of monitoring technologies for public security, IoT, and national cyber capacity building. She is also a non-resident research fellow at the Brazilian Naval War College (NAC-EGN) working on the geopolitics of technology. More generally, Louise Marie Hurel's work focuses on exploring interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary security challenges and the role of non-state actors in cybersecurity (Taylor and Francis Cyber Policy Journal), regional and national Internet governance (Universidad San Andrés, UPenn), and infrastructure security.
Her previous experience includes consultancy for technical bodies, a UNESCO project on "What if we all governed the Internet", and research in Internet governance, privacy, and security at the Center for Technology and Society at Getúlio Vargas Foundation (CTS-FGV). She has also been actively involved in Internet governance spaces, also serving as representative for Europe in the Executive Committee of the Non Commercial Users’ Constituency at ICANN.
Louise Marie Hurel’s research is supported by LSE PhD Studentship.
Expertise
Cybersecurity, Internet governance, Cyber policy, STS.