The Politics of Bio(in)security: science, experts and the dilemma of dual use

This thesis explores the politics of biosecurity and the governance of dual-use research. It focuses on life sciences, whose rapid development brings together the issues of biological weapons, terrorism, and the dangers of scientific innovations. The thesis has three goals: first, to situate the dilemma of dual-use research historically and conceptually, second, to analyse how the attempts to govern biosecurity and regulate dual-use research in life sciences affect the relations between science and security, and third, to discuss what implications this science-security nexus has for the politics of (in)security. Approaching the subject from critical security studies, the thesis looks at how the nexus between science and security is constructed. It does so, first, by exploring the dominant political and expert discourses on biosecurity and by looking at two distinct empirical sites, which exemplify how a regime of biosecurity governance evolves at a boundary of science and security in a 'global' and 'local' context: the international biological weapons regime and the Czech system of biosecurity management. The thesis finds that the attempts to govern dual-use research in life sciences focus not only on materials and technologies but also on scientific knowledge. It conceptualizes dual-use as a problem of..