Research
My research focuses on the governance of digitalisation, data protection, and surveillance in democratic societies. My work examines how EU/EEA regulatory frameworks shape the conditions under which profiling, tracking, and other data‑driven surveillance practices become normalised, and how these developments affect democratic norms and fundamental rights.
In 2024 I completed my doctoral thesis, Governing Surveillance: Digitalisation, data protection and democracy. The thesis uses governmentality studies and Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach to show how digitalisation and data protection policies legitimise surveillance through risk‑based and neoliberal rationalities. My recent publications address themes such as the limits of the GDPR, the transformation of surveillance in international digitalisation discourse and AI governance.
Teaching
AI and Institutional Capacity
Swedish and Comparative Politics (SVGE50)
The Swedish Welfare State Model
Swedish and Comparative Politics (SVGE50)
Introduction to EU Studies (SVGE80)
Methodology and development work in school-Secondary Education
Culture, Media and Society
Language Acquisition in Theory and Practice
Related info
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Limits of the GDPR in Regulating Profiling and Algorithmic Decision-Making
European Consortium for Political Research, Wroclaw. September 2019.
The politics of big data: Challenges ahead
The Swedish Political Science Association annual conference, Malmö. October 2018
Evading surveillance in the works of Philip K. Dick.
The 8th Biennial Surveillance Studies Network Conference. Aarhus University, Denmark. June 2018.
Selected publications
Padden, M. (2024). Governing Surveillance: Digitalisation, Data Protection and Democracy.
Padden, M. & Öjehag-Pettersson, A. (2024). Digitalisation, democracy and the GDPR: The efforts of DPAs to defend democratic principles despite the limitations of the GDPR. Big Data & Society.
Rönnblom, Malin. Vanja Carlsson and Michaela Padden. (2024). Chapter 9: AI and ethics: policies of de-politicisation? Handbook on Public Policy and Artificial Intelligence.
Padden, M. (2023). The transformation of surveillance in the digitalisation discourse of the OECD: a brief genealogy. Internet Policy Review.
Padden, M. & Öjehag-Pettersson, A. (2021). Protected how? Problem representations of risk in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Critical Policy Studies.