After receiving my PhD in sociology from the University of Bayreuth in 2015 I worked as a post-doc at the Department of Anthropology at Martin-Luther University Halle (until 2019). In 2020 I joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Leipzig where I started a project on humanitarian drone infrastructures which was part of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 1199): “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”. Before joining Freie Universität as a Post-Doc I also worked at the Center for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Berlin. My research focuses on conceptual and methodological implications of technological change in the field of Global Health.

• Burchardt, Marian & René Umlauf. 2023: “Where is the bottleneck?”: Drones and the paradoxes of digitizing medical supplies in Ghana. Global Public Health
• Burchardt, Marian & René Umlauf. 2023: Dreams and Realities of Infrastructural Leapfrogging: Airspace, Drone Corridors, and Logistics in African Healthcare. In: Burchardt, Marian & Dirk van Laack: Making Spaces through Infrastructure: Visions, Technologies, and Tensions, DeGruyter: Oldenburg.
• Umlauf, René. 2023. Graduates as a service: Running a data-factory in Northern Uganda. In: Rottenburg, Richard (ed.): Translating Technology in Africa Vol.1: Metrics, Brill: Leiden.
• Umlauf, René & Marian Burchardt. 2022. Infrastructure-as-a-service: Empty skies, bad roads, and the rise of cargo drones. Environment and Planning A: Economy & Space.
• Umlauf, René. 2021. "Zur technischen Krisenhaftigkeit der Corona-Krise" in: Jahrbuch für Technikphilosophie, Nomos Verlag, 337-341.
• Umlauf, René. 2021. Silicon Health: Understanding the rise and impact of drone logistics in Somathosphere, Mai.
• Umlauf, René. 2020. 'Give work, not aid'. Digitale Fabrikarbeit in Norduganda in Berliner Blätter: Ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge zum Thema: „Digitale Arbeitskulturen: Rahmungen, Effekte, Herausforderungen", 82 Panama Verlag, 83-98.
• Umlauf, René. 2019. 'Dormant parasites’: experimentalities and knowledge production in Uganda’s malaria control program. In: Experimentation beyond the laboratory: new perspectives on technology in society, Ibo van de Poel und Lotte Alsveld (Hg.), London and New York: Routledge, 179-199.
• Umlauf, René. 2018. Mobile Labore. Zur Diagnose und Organisation von Malaria in Uganda. Transcript, Bielefeld.
• Umlauf, René und Sung-Joon Park. 2017. Stock-outs: Improvisations and processes of infrastructuring in Ugandas HIV/Aids and malaria programmes, in Global Public Health.
• Umlauf, René. 2017. Precarity and Preparedness. Non-adherence as institutional work in diagnosing and treating malaria, in Medical Anthropology.
• Umlauf, René. 2017. “An Option with no Choice? The Role of Preventive Technologies in Malaria Control”, In: Allegra Laboratory Thematic Week: Medical Technologies and Infrastructure: Mobilities and (Dis-)Connectivities, ed. Hansjörg Dilger and Dominik Matthes.
• Bell, D., H. Hopkins, J. Cunningham, M. Gatton, I. González, S.Kibira, D. Kyabayinze, M. Mayxay, R. Umlauf. 2016. Prototype positive control wells for malaria rapid diagnostic tests: prospective evaluation of implementation among health workers in Lao PDR and Uganda, in BMJ Journals.
• Beisel, Uli, René Umlauf, Eleanor Hutchinson, und Clare Chandler. 2016. The complexities of simple technologies: re-imagining the role of rapid diagnostic tests in Malaria control efforts inMalaria Journal 15, (1):64.
• René Umlauf und Sung Joon Park. 2014. Caring as existential insecurity: quarantine, care, and human insecurity in the Ebola crisis. Somatosphere, November 24.
• René Umlauf und Stefan Höhne. 2014. Die Akteur-Netzwerk Theorie. Zur Vernetzung und Entgrenzung des Sozialen. In: Theorien in Raum und Stadtforschung, Jürgen Oßenbrügge und Anne Vogelpohl (Hg.). Münster, Westfälisches Dampfboot, 203-222.
• Umlauf, René. 2009. Fabrikarbeit und die Disziplinierung der Arbeiter. Saarbrücken, AV Akademikerverlag.