Sarah Perret

Sarah Perret serves as Senior Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations at ESPOL (Catholic University of Lille) since 2023. She maintains dual research affiliations as Associate Researcher at King's College London and the Laboratoire de Théorie politique (CRESPPA-CNRS), while contributing to the Chair of Geopolitics of Risk at École Normale Supérieure de Paris. Her institutional roles include lead collaborator for the ANR-PrAIrie project "Artificial Intelligence at the Border" (2023) and co-leadership of Working Group 1 within the international DATAMIG network.

Her academic formation features a PhD in Political Science from University of Paris-Saclay, augmented by visiting research at Georgetown University. Post-doctoral work spanned War Studies at King's College London (2019-2023) and Geography at ENS Paris (2017-2019). Teaching appointments include Paris-Saclay, Paris 2 Assas, Paris 8 Vincennes, Georgetown, ENS, King's, and Sciences Po Paris.

Perret's research critically interrogates how security policies reshape borders, identity, and mobility through (non)knowledge production and digital technologies like biometrics and AI. Her work exposes the epistemic violence inherent in EU border security apparatuses, examining how datafication processes generate errors, fakes, and subjectivities that reinforce exclusionary practices. Previous investigations covered naturalization legislation, securitization of immigration law, and counterterrorism impacts on French Muslim populations.

Analysis of her 2022-2025 publications reveals three dominant trajectories: (1) critical examinations of border technologies' material and epistemic effects; (2) theoretical innovations in risk geopolitization and non-knowledge regimes; (3) political economy analyses of risk capitalization. These intersect at the nexus of migration governance, data politics, and security innovation, consistently challenging technocratic border management paradigms.

Her professional profile extends beyond academia through prior roles as parliamentary attaché at the French National Assembly, World Bank consultant, and ministerial advisor. Current research initiatives include the ANR-PrAIrie project on AI border applications and DATAMIG network coordination, while her institutional home at ESPOL-Lab anchors interdisciplinary security studies.