Regine Paul
Political Science
Regine Paul (affiliated member)
Regine Paul’s scholarly interests are in state theory, critical political economy, critical policy studies, decolonial social theory, and science and technology studies (STS). With her Research Group on Digital Transformations at the MPIfG, to be newly established from spring 2026 onwards, she explores articulations of competition statehood in global tech races comparatively across time, space, and specific technologies. In her recent book “The AI Matrix: Profits, Power, Politics” (co-authored with Daniel Mügge and Vali Stan) and other publications, she has developed foundations for a more global and historiographic political economy reading of digital transformations.
Paul’s research program is situated in critical-interpretivist methodology, aiming to move beyond economistic, technologically determinist, and Western-centric analyses of how digital technologies transform state discourses, policy priorities, and practices. Three broader inspirations guide the group’s work: (1) an analytical focus on the multiple and conflicting economic, political, and societal rationalities which different states navigate in their tech competitiveness projects; (2) sensitivity towards technology’s lack of neutrality and how technological affordances shape paths for state action; and (3) acknowledgement of how any specific articulation of tech competition statehood is connected across time and space through colonial relations of power and hierarchy.
Paul welcomes dissertation projects which cover aspects of this broad conceptual-analytical program. Of special empirical interest are the public governance of and with artificial intelligence technologies, quantum computing, digital twins, and de-extinction biotechnology in post-colonial jurisdictions such as Brazil, India, or Kenya, but also Europe.
Research fields:
- Statehood in the digital age
- Critical and decolonial political economy
- Technology regulation and governance