Samuel Singler

Samuel Singler is a University Lecturer in Societal Security at the University of Helsinki. His research is situated within the fields of border criminology and societal security, and focuses on the relationship between novel surveillance technologies, criminal justice, and border control. His empirical work illuminates how and why security devices diffuse across and through borders, how they shape contemporary ‘crimmigration’ practices and security policies, and how they are deployed and contested on the ground. He has also made theoretical contributions to the study of security technologies, examining how new and future digital tools reshape public surveillance and policing practices. His research situates the development of surveillance technologies against the background of postcolonial hierarchies, with the aim of contributing to the decolonization and Southernization of criminology.

Samuel is the author of Outsourcing Crimmigration Control: Digital Borders, the IOM, and Biometric Statehood (Oxford University Press, 2025), which won the British International Studies Association L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize. His 2025 article, "Surveillance evangelism: Private technology companies and the digital futures of crimmigration control", won the 2025 Theoretical Criminology Best Article Prize and the 2026 British Society of Criminology Brian Williams Best Article Prize.

Since 2020, Samuel has acted as an Associate Director of the Border Criminologies network and co-leads its Technology & Digital Futures thematic group. He holds a DPhil in Criminology and MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. Prior to taking up his current position, he worked as an Assistant Professor in Criminology at the University of Essex and Departmental Lecturer in Criminology at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy at the University of Helsinki in 2026, and has also worked as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Law and the University of Roehampton.

At the University of Helsinki, Samuel is involved in developing the master's program in Societal Security and leads its study track on "Economic structures, technological change, and crises".

Outside of academia, Samuel has been employed as an independent border management consultant for the IOM, and has research experience from organizations such as RAND Europe and the Cambridge University Forum on Geopolitics. In 2022, he contributed to a report on the use of biometric technologies in the humanitarian sector published by The Engine Room.