Jan Opper

Jan Opper is PhD Fellow at the IFSH. He joined the IFSH in June 2023, within the framework of the graduate program "Democratising Security in Turbulent Times". Before working at the IFSH, he was an associate member of the graduate program working at the Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker-Centre for Science and Peace Research (ZNF) at the University of Hamburg, focussing on Biological Weapons, Disarmament and the Control of Dual-Use items in biology. He studied political science at Philipps-Universität Marburg and has a master degree in political science from Freie Universität Berlin.

In his research, Jan Opper is particularly interested in how the assessment of technological capabilities and the belief in technology interplays with security concepts. He primarily looks at those issues from a knowledge perspective and how knowledge is constructed, maintained, and used in security practices. Jan Opper focusses mainly on critical security studies and science and technology studies, and the sociology of knowledge and employ qualitative methods, including ethnography and discourse analysis.