Digital technologies are increasingly constructed and sold as infrastructures for national and European security, for resilience against crises and catastrophes,  and for ‘digital’ or ‘technological' sovereignty. The EU invests heavily in the development of telecommunications standards and patents, the maintenance of independent cloud-services, or the securing of supply chains for microchips. Designing, maintaining and expanding digital infrastructure increasingly turns into an indispensable geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy.

From 5G to 6G to XG, digital technologies are driven by constant updates. At each iteration, they promise more bandwidth and connectivity, less latency and better technical ‘solutions’ for urgent social problems, ranging from climate crises to demographic change. The research project The Social Life of XG: Digital infrastructures and the reconfiguration of sovereignty and imagined communities has investigated projects of digital and technological sovereignty across multiple sites in Europe: semiconductor fabs in Germany or Austria, 5G and 6G development labs and conferences, lithium-ion battery production sites in Sweden, and more. Drawing on an anthropological and interdisciplinary perspective, it has traced how 'digital sovereignty' hits the ground, encounters challenges and potentially reconfigures ideas of community and sovereignty.

In Benedict Anderson’s seminal work “Imagined Communities”, it was the printing press that allowed the idea of the nation as a sovereign community to emerge. How do contemporary XG-Infrastructures allow or enshrine different ideas of sovereignty and community? Who are the emerging subjects of ‘digital sovereignty’ and who are the subjected? What contradictions and conflicts emerge - and how could we imagine alternatives?

At our closing conference on October 13th and 14th, we will present and discuss project findings over two days. Day 1 will kick off the event with an hybrid keynote in the evening by Cecilia Rikap (University College London) on 'digital sovereignty' and corporate power. Day 2 will be a full-day offline event held at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Møhrenstraße 40/41, 10117 Berlin.

You can download the full programme with abstracts here.

Registration: 

Please register via E-mail until October 3rd and specify whether you would like to participate in the online keynote and/or in the offline event at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: albrecgl(at)hu-berlin.de

To Join the keynote virtually, you may pre-register here.

Programme

13.10.2025, Day 1

19:00 – 20:30

Online Keynote: Reclaiming Digital Sovereignty

with
Cecilia Rikap (UCL)

14.10.2025, Day 2

9:30 – 10:15

Welcome & Introduction: The Social Life of XG

with
Manuela Bojadžijev, Alexander Harder (HU Berlin)

10:30 – 12:30

Panel 1: Scenes, Sites and Landscapes of XG

Loren Grbic, Anna Pillinger (JKU Linz)

Imagining Chips ‘made in Austria’

Mauricio Rogat (Linköping University)
Technological sovereignty and the Swedish border regime – the case of Northvolt and the Northern industrial frontier

Alexander Harder (HU Berlin)
Sovereignty without Subjects? Infrastructural Imaginaries in the Development of 6G Telecommunication Standards

Moderation: Moritz Altenried (TU Berlin)

12:30 - 14:00

Lunch Break

14:00 - 15:00

Cloud Contestations and Sites of Transitional Infrastructure

with
Helen V. Pritchard (FHNW Basel)
Femke Snelting (TITiPI)

15:30 – 17:30

Panel 2: Reconfigurations of Community and Sovereignty

Roland Atzmüller, Fabienne Décieux, Lukas Egger (JKU Linz)
Market-centric Reconfiguration of Sovereignty: Diversification and Public Investment

Karin Krifors (Linköping University)
Interoperability as snitching

Kim West (Linköping University)
The Place of Culture in the Project of Digital Sovereignty in the EU

Moderation: Bernd Kasparek (TU Delft)

18:00 – 19:30

On the Imagined Communities of Digital Infrastructure

with
Manuela Bojadžijev (HU Berlin)
Stefan Jonsson (Linköping University)

Organised by:
Manuela Bojadžijev, Alexander Harder, Gloria Albrecht, Marthe Völker (Institute for European Ethnology & Berlin Institute for Migration Research, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)