Franziska Plümmer is an Assistant Professor of Europe–China Relations in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She researches how borders, migration regimes, and digital technologies transform Europe–China relations, migration governance, and global security governance.

Her PhD (Dr. phil.), completed at the University of Tübingen and published as a monograph by Amsterdam University Press in 2022, examined security practices of the Chinese border regime. Drawing on multi-sited border regime analysis and fieldwork in China, the thesis analysed how the Chinese government defines “illegality,” how these definitions align with international law, and how measures to prevent “illegal” migration are implemented locally.

Research interests

• Borders, mobility, and data
  How border regimes, mobility control, and data regulation intersect in Europe–China and East Asia–Europe relations.
• Digital infrastructures and tech policy
  EU technology policy and digital sovereignty; the role of digital technologies maintaining democratic infrastructures of migration governance.
• China, ideas, and global governance
  Chinese politics and intellectual history, theories of International Relations, and China’s role in international organizations and in the European Union. For instance, China and the European far-right.

Current research projects

• Chinese Selfies in Europe (co‑PI, with Linde Luijnenburg), a project on (digital) self-representation, migration, and Europe–China relations, funded by a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Previously

Before joining the Department of European Studies in 2022, she worked as a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (2021), as a lecturer in East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna (2019–2020), and as a junior lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Tübingen (2013–2019).