Christoph Engemann studies the nexus of bureaucracy and subjectivity in the age of the Internet. He graduated in Psychology at the University of Bremen, Germany and is now pursuing a Ph.D in Sociology at the Graduate School of Social Sciences in Bremen and at the Faculty of Media Bauhaus University in Weimar.
In his recent book ‘Electronic Government – Vom User zum Bürger’ (Electronic Government – From Users to Citizens) he analyses the political economy of individual identity in the Internet. Here Engemann proposes that the internet is presently in the phase of its de-anonymisation and shows which actors are at the front of this process: Microsoft (with .net Passport and Palladium/NGSCB), the Liberty Alliance, the TCG and finally the nation states with their digital signature and electronic government projects.
His Ph.D, titled ‘The Citoyen of Electronic Government’, aims to investigate which kind of relationship between the state and its citizens is implicit to Electronic Government programmes in Germany. His work is supported by the Hans Böckler Stiftung, the foundation of the German Trade Unions.
Mr. Engemann has delivered numerous speeches on Electronic Government and Citizenship, Open Source Software and nation state sovereignty as well as on subjectivity in modern organizations.
His research interests include the techniques of subjectification in economic and state institutions, with special regard to their medial premises. His current research focus lies on the impact of such techniques in the reform of the welfare state and the educational sector. Furthermore he is interested in authentification-media and their history, as well as in the political economy of the Internet.