Leo Thüer

Leo Thüer has been a student assistant in the research group "Politics of Digitalisation" at the WZB since October 2019. He has mainly supported Dr. Julia Pohle in researching the discourse of "digital sovereignty" in its historical development and current significance for internet governance, as well as Ronja Kniep in field sociological research on transnational surveillance by Signals Intelligence agencies understood as symbolic domination aiming to enforce legitimacy of certain interpretations.

After an interdisciplinary bachelor's degree in political science, public law and literature (FU Berlin, Université Paris VIII) and advocacy efforts together with digital rights NGOs in Berlin, Paris and Brussels, he is currently studying for a Master's degree in Political Science at the Otto Suhr Institute.

His current focus of interest is on Foucauldian discourse analysis for the critique of governmentality and genealogies of digitalization. In his master's thesis, he analyses the relation between ordoliberal and cybernetic logics of government in different regulation proposals for the 'digital market economy,' in order to extend the limits of critique within this discursive field.