School of Critical Studies

Dr Philipp Seuferling

  • Lecturer in Communications (English Language & Linguistics)

Biography

I joined the School of Critical Studies as a Lecturer in Communications in August 2025. I am also a Visiting Fellow at the LSE's Department of Media and Communications. 

I hold a Ph.D. in Media and Communcation Studies from Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden (2021). Prior to that I acquired B.A. and M.Sc. degrees at the universities of Hamburg, Germany, Helsinki, Finland, and Lund, Sweden.

Before joining UofG, I was LSE Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE (London School of Economics) from 2022 to 2025, following a stay as Visiting Scholar at the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, USA (2022). 

 

 

Research interests

My research practice comprises multiple projects on the history and present of borders and media technologies. My work explores the long temporalities of media, communication and technology in migration and borders, seeking to advance critiques of increasingly digital and automated border regimes.

I am completing my first monograph entitled Encampment. A media history of control and humanitarianism, under contract with University of Illinois Press. The book draws on archival material from German refugee camps since 1945 and offers a history of media and communications in the space and institution of the camp at the onset of the modern Western refugee regime. Besides that, I am currently working on a range of further projects on histories of smartness and automation in the cases of Ellis Island Immigration Station in New York, the history of DNA testing for kinship surveillance of migrants, or histories of benefits administration for Huguenot refugees in 1600s England. 

Ongoing other projects:

- with LSE and NYU: AI Rationales: How technologists, policy makers and lawyers imagine artificial intelligence for immigration in London and New York City (funded by LSE-NYU seed fund)

- with COST action "DATAMIG": edited volume on keywords of datafication and migration 

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021
Number of items: 7.

2026

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2026) Kinship surveillance: technology and the weaponization of the family at the border. Cultural Studies, (doi: 10.1080/09502386.2026.2664528) (Early Online Publication)

Pfeifer, Michelle and Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2026) When was the ‘smart border’? Towards an agenda for historicising the technopolitics of migration and border control. Cultural Studies, (doi: 10.1080/09502386.2026.2664531) (Early Online Publication)

2025

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2025) Tech, stones, and stories: how the violence of border tech is a historical matter. Public Books, 14 Oct, [Book Review]

2024

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2024) Smart Ellis Island? Tracing techniques of automating border control. New Media and Society, 26(9), pp. 5039-5058. (doi: 10.1177/14614448241251802)

2023

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511, Forsler, Ingrid, King, Gretchen, Löfgren, Isabel and Saati, Farah (2023) Diraya.media—learning media literacy with and from media activists. International Journal of Communication, 17, pp. 901-919.

2022

Leurs, Koen and Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2022) Migration and the deep time of media infrastructures. Communication, Culture and Critique, 15(2), pp. 290-297. (doi: 10.1093/ccc/tcac019)

2021

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 and Leurs, Koen (2021) Histories of humanitarian technophilia: how imaginaries of media technologies have shaped migration infrastructures. Mobilities, 16(5), pp. 670-687. (doi: 10.1080/17450101.2021.1960186)

This list was generated on Thu Aug 13 13:27:35 2026 BST.
Number of items: 7.

Articles

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2026) Kinship surveillance: technology and the weaponization of the family at the border. Cultural Studies, (doi: 10.1080/09502386.2026.2664528) (Early Online Publication)

Pfeifer, Michelle and Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2026) When was the ‘smart border’? Towards an agenda for historicising the technopolitics of migration and border control. Cultural Studies, (doi: 10.1080/09502386.2026.2664531) (Early Online Publication)

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2024) Smart Ellis Island? Tracing techniques of automating border control. New Media and Society, 26(9), pp. 5039-5058. (doi: 10.1177/14614448241251802)

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511, Forsler, Ingrid, King, Gretchen, Löfgren, Isabel and Saati, Farah (2023) Diraya.media—learning media literacy with and from media activists. International Journal of Communication, 17, pp. 901-919.

Leurs, Koen and Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2022) Migration and the deep time of media infrastructures. Communication, Culture and Critique, 15(2), pp. 290-297. (doi: 10.1093/ccc/tcac019)

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 and Leurs, Koen (2021) Histories of humanitarian technophilia: how imaginaries of media technologies have shaped migration infrastructures. Mobilities, 16(5), pp. 670-687. (doi: 10.1080/17450101.2021.1960186)

Book Reviews

Seuferling, Philipp ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-5511 (2025) Tech, stones, and stories: how the violence of border tech is a historical matter. Public Books, 14 Oct, [Book Review]

This list was generated on Thu Aug 13 13:27:35 2026 BST.

Prior publications

Article

Philipp Seuferling (2025) Balbi, G. (2023). The digital revolution: A short history of an ideology (B. McClellan-Broussard, Trans.). Oxford University Press, 159 pp. Communications Crossref. (doi: 10.1515/commun-2024-0116)

Koen Leurs, Philipp Seuferling (2023) The media operations of postcolonial mobility regimes International Journal of Cultural Studies London School of Economics & Political Science. (doi: 10.1177/13678779231198124)

Hans-Ulrich Wagner, Philipp Seuferling (2020) Uses of the Past in Refugee Documentaries in Sweden and Germany Media History Philipp Seuferling. ISSN 1469-9729 (doi: 10.1080/13688804.2019.1634530)

Philipp Seuferling (2019) “We Demand Better Ways to Communicate”: Pre-Digital Media Practices in Refugee Camps Media and Communication Crossref. (doi: 10.17645/mac.v7i2.1869)

Book Review

Philipp Seuferling (2024) Book review. Horsti, Karina. Survival and Witness at Europe’s Border: The Afterlives of a Disaster.: Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 2023. Mediekultur Journal of Media and Communication Research Philipp Seuferling.

Other

Philipp Seuferling, Jeannine Teichert, Heike Graf (2024) Entanglements of media, migration, and crisis MedieKultur London School of Economics & Political Science. (doi: 10.7146/mk.v40i77.149081)

Website

Philipp Seuferling (2024) Attacks on asylum-seeker shelters by far-right rioters are systemic to how border regimes communicate London School of Economics & Political Science.

Philipp Seuferling, Michelle Pfeifer (2024) Smart borders and their critiques are too focused on the tech London School of Economics & Political Science.

Book Section

Philipp Seuferling, Anne Kaun, Fredrik Stiernstedt, Alexis Logsdon (2023) Serving machines and heterotopias: Data entry work in prisons and refugee camps in the US and Uganda Media backends: digital infrastructures and sociotechnical relations Philipp Seuferling.

Grants

2025-2026. LSE-NYU Seed Grant. £10,000. AI Rationales: How technologists, policy makers and lawyers imagine artificial intelligence for immigration in London and New York City. Co-I with Prof Myria Georgiou, Prof Radha Hegde, Dr Maggie Jack.

2020. Svenska Institutet (Swedish Institute). SEK100,000 (£9,000). Media Literacy for Tomorrow. Project on young media activism in the SWANA region. Outcome: diraya.media. Co-I with Dr Ingrid Forsler, Dr Isabel Löfgren, Dr Gretchen King. 

Supervision

I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD researchers in the broad intersection of media and communication studies, STS, and critical border and migration studies. 

Teaching

I currently teach on the M.Sc. Global Communications, covering topics such as media and communcation theory, media and migration, media history, and critical theory and methods. 

I have broader teaching experience across media and communication studies, having taught at LSE, NYU, and Södertörn University.