Vic Castro is a scholar in International Relations (IR) based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their research combines critical security studies, technology and cyberspace politics, and social theory, with a current focus on Ukraine.
Trained in the Copenhagen School of security studies, Vic has worked abundantly with securitisation theory and classical realism, but also with new materialism and actor-network theory (ANT). Their approach to theory is eclectic, drawing in further influences from queer and disability studies. Empirically, their research spans a broad range of topics including encryption, spyware, corporate power, intelligence, medicine, intersex rights, embodiment, decolonisation, and popular culture—the latter inherited from their area studies background.
Vic’s edited volume with Prof. Nicholas Kiersey, The World Politics of Disco Elysium, has been published by Routledge in 2025. Their second book, Mechanicity: The Material Force of Code in International Politics, is under contract at a university press. They have published academic articles in Security Dialogue, European Journal of International Security, and Intelligence and National Security. As a freelance technology journalist, they have written in Numerama, FrAndroid, and Le Figaro.
Vic has obtained a PhD in political science at the University of Copenhagen (2024) with the dissertation Technology, the Speech Act: Mechanical Embodiments of Cybersecurity and International Politics supervised by Prof. Ole Wæver. They previously received an MA in International Relations (2019) at the French National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations (Inalco), where they pursued undergraduate studies in the Turkish and Urdu languages.
