I recently undertook a short fellowship at The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway. I was kindly invited and hosted by the brilliant Bruno Oliveira Martins, as part of the RegulAIR research project. As the team write, ‘over the last decade, the use of drones has increased dramatically, leading to a wide range of new security challenges. In response to this proliferation, significant international, regional, and national efforts have been undertaken to develop regulations to integrate drones safely into civilian airspace’. In response, the RegulAIR project ‘aims to provide new research-based knowledge to Norwegian and EU regulatory bodies to contribute to the safe integration of drones into civilian airspace’ by addressing ‘two essential contemporary challenges: (1) how to conceive security in the three-dimensional airspace, and (2) how to reconceptualize the new security problem-set emanating from emerging technologies’ (you can read more about the project here, and more on drones and security in the Norwegian context here).
It was fantastic to spend the week with Bruno and the wider RegulAIR team (which includes Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Chantal Lavallée, Arthur Holland Michel, Samar Abbas Nawaz, and Lise Endregard Hemat). I learned more about how the fascinating project is unfolding and we reflected on how it fit with my own research in the context of the UK, we began developing a paper, we fed back on papers in progress, and – as an important culmination to the week – PRIO hosted the excellent ‘Drones in civilian airspaces: Security, regulation, and imagination‘ conference.
It was a pleasure to participate, both as a speaker delivering a paper on ‘diversifying imaginations of disruptive drones’, and as the chair for the ‘urban spaces’ panel. In my paper, I argued for a need to expand our focus on potential drone disruptions as we imagine drones. To do this, I spoke about diversifying the who (actors), what (encounters), and where (sights/sites) of drone disruptions, as they feature in, shape, and punctuate our imaginations of drones.
It was such a pleasure to join the folks at The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and to explore Oslo more broadly. Thank you for a wonderful (and very scenic) trip!
