Topic of the thesis:"Shadow wars" and the professionalization of security: an analysis of "drone geo-politics" in the Sahel.

Abstract:The study looks to investigate the way "professionals of security" understand, think and plan "geo-politics" in a "dronified" age. State security responses are increasingly shaped and facilitated by avant-garde technological tools; drones being one of them require to be analyzed as "objects of security". Drones however are not only technological tools but part of security assemblages. The sequences, framings and organization of drones as assemblages or networks critically inform security practices of states and their professionalized security apparatuses. While there is ever increasingly body of literature on military drones, little has been written on how those "objects of security" shape traditional geopolitical understanding and how they impact the relation power/knowledge/space. This study will focus on one of the "places" of the so-called "amorphous Global War on Terror": the Sahel region, specifically looking at Niger as the hosting country of two (likely three) foreign drone bases. It is exactly through the reconstruction of the recent history of the GWoT in the Sahel and its exceptional (legal and political) nature of blurred blend between police and war (as a boundless global counter-terrorist struggle) that the research will connect technological tools, security practices, and spaces of security. The research will analyze through a socio-material approach the "mediator power" of non-human objects (drones) in shaping "geo-political" knowledge and action in contemporary security practices.
Research interests: International relations, international political sociology, practice in IR & security studies, geopolitics & geo-politics, political geography, the study of war and political violence, the military and technology, aerial technologies, drones, the material turn in IR.
Graduated from:B.A. Political Science, Università Statale di Milano, Italy. M.A. International Relations, Università Statale di Milano, Italy. M.A. History of International Relations, Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Degrees obtained:Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, University of Milan, Italy. Master of Arts in International Relations: "International Politics and Regional Dynamics", University of Milan, Italy. Master of Arts in History of International Relations: "Global Conflicts in the Modern Era", Leiden University, the Netherlands.
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