
Dr Kuba Jablonowski
PhD, MSc, MA
Expertise
Kuba Jablonowski conducts engaged research in the field of algorithmic governance, border control, and digital identity. He collaborates with the civil society, civil servants, and private firms, and often speaks to media outlets.
Current positions
Lecturer in Sociology
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Contact
Press and media
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Biography
Research interests
My research investigates digital borders as sites of identity production. This novel agenda advances academic knowledge in government studies, border studies, and digital studies by demonstrating that digital borders need to be investigated as means of identity governance, and not only as tools of migration control.
This agenda emerged from my doctoral research, which investigated EU citizenship in the UK. It was later developed into a collaborative project exploring the digital reform of British borders after Brexit that won a £415k grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). I served as co-investigator on that project and continue to translate its findings into high-profile research articles and book chapters. I also reached policy and public audiences through reports, blogs, and podcasts. My work has received recognition from academics, with invitations to deliver research presentations at British, Italian, and Canadian universities, and to join research advisory boards. It also made impact beyond academia, from invitations to share findings with the UK and EU civil servants to regular citations of my research in the media, including Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, BBC Radio 4, Computer Weekly, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and The LBC.
I currently work on a new project investigating policy mobility and technology diffusion in the context of border control and identity verification. Before I became a full-time academic I worked in the voluntary sector on migrant rights and social justice projects, and in the private sector on enhanced due diligence investigations.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Computing the Student: Developing participatory methods to research digital surveillance in UKHE
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
Surveillance of students in Higher Education (HE) is now ubiquitous and increasingly fine-grained, encompassing the ways that institutions monitor student attendance, location, visa compliance, ‘integrity’ of assessments, ‘engagement’, and ‘wellbeing’,…Managing organisational unit
School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesDates
01/09/2023 to 31/07/2024
Algorithmic Politics and Administrative Justice in the EU Settlement Scheme
Principal Investigator
Description
The EUSS is the policy framework and an administrative procedure introduced in line with the Withdrawal Agreement ratified by the UK and EU in January 2020. It is designed to…Managing organisational unit
School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesDates
01/01/2021 to 30/08/2024
Publications
Selected publications
24/09/2024Loss and liability
Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law
Recent publications
19/05/2025Societies of immigration control: The transactional subject of British borders after Brexit
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Computing the Student
Loss and liability
Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law
Automating welfare states: Data, algorithms and digital justice
Progressivism after COVID: Experiences, Impulses, Ideas
Digital immigration status: From logics of inscription to logics of control
Migration, Displacement and Diversity: The IRiS Anthology