Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Canada (MA completed 2018)
2018- Jennifer Whitaker entered the MA Sociology program in the fall of 2017 after completing her BA (Honours) the previous spring, also in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University. Under the supervision of Dr. Norma Möllers, her MA thesis focusses on the collection of information for workplace wellness programs and details current health care law and non-discrimination policy in the United States. Jennifer is particularly interested in the technological, ethical and political intersections of surveillance studies and continues to explore these topics in her research.
PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Canada (PhD completed Fall 2021)
Thomas Linder is a doctoral candidate and a Big Data Surveillance research fellow at the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University, supervised by Dr. David Murakami Wood. Thomas has submitted his PhD on Canadian Police Real-Time Operations Centres, and will be examined very soon. Keenly interested in political theory, he completed his BA and MA at the University of Zurich. His MA thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Philipp Sarasin investigated the complexity of defining surveillance in the digital era.
His doctoral research is on emerging surveillance technologies and their impact on domestic security practices. Beyond political theory and international relations, he works in Science and Technologies Studies with a particular focus on digital technologies and is a co-editor at ‘Transmissions: An SSS Companion Blog.’
In addition, he is a research fellow in the Big Data Surveillance SSHRC project where he works on Big Data-driven national security surveillance practices as well as on the development of intelligence-led and predictive policing programs in Canada.
PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Queen’s University, Canada
Özge is a PhD candidate at Queen's University in the Department of Sociology, under the supervision of David Lyon. Her dissertation analyses the surveillance experiences of young adults in Turkey; focusing on how they understand, experience, assess and engage with commercial surveillance through their smartphones, mobile apps and social media. She conducted one-to-one in-depth and focus group interviews with young adults in Turkey to understand their experiences. She is in the process of writing her dissertation.
She has also worked, recently, on articles (in press and under review) that discuss social impacts of the pandemic through an autoethnographic approach as part of the Massive and Microscopic Sensemaking During COVID-19 Times project.
Having an interdisciplinary background, Özge was awarded a master's degree in International Communications from the University of Leeds in the UK as a British Chevening scholar, she completed a master's in Business Administration in Italy with a Simest (Società Italiana per le imprese all'estero) scholarship in Università per Stranieri di Perugia and she received her BA in Communication Studies from Bilkent University in Turkey. Following her master's degrees, she worked for about ten years in different positions in the field of trade, sales, and marketing in multinational and small-medium size companies in Turkey. After she came to Queen's, she worked as the Surveillance Studies Centre seminar series organizer for three years.
Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Canada (PhD completed 2019)
2019- Steven Richardson obtained his PhD in Sociology from Queen's University in June 2019. Focusing on wearable technologies, his doctoral research explored how things like tinkering, problem solving, hype, communities and communications shape what wearables are and are for. With a blend of STS (Science and Technology Studies), phenomenology and reflexive ethnography, this research uncovered a broader and more inclusive approach to understanding innovation, what he terms ‘the duality of design’. The term also implicates the role of the researcher in this relation, renewing the call for more reflexivity in accounts of socio-technical ordering.
In short: when we study emerging technologies, we’re not just studying innovation communities, we are a part of that same community; we may be critical of some new technology or its surveillance implications, but that critique does not stand above, apart, or aside from that same reality. To move sociology forward, we have to move away from seeing ourselves (scholars, researchers) as merely ‘participant observers’ but rather as ‘observant participants’ – in the midst of things like everyone else. Not only does this change in perspective offer important opportunities for reconceptualizing our relationship with the technologies we use, design and study, it helps bring us closer to the technologies and innovations that (will) continue to get closer to us. Bringing something close is a condition for a renewed beginning. Following this, our quest(ioning) concerning technology can continue with a greater appreciation of the role social science can play in bringing on not just hopeful, but desirable futures.
Cultural Studies, Queen's University, Canada (PhD completed 2019)
2019- Spencer Revoy is a cultural and media theorist who is currently a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies program at Queen’s University. He received a BA with Honours in Cultural Studies and an MA in Theory, Culture and Politics, both from Trent University. His MA thesis examined the structure of Facebook’s surveillance program through a re-evaluation of Foucault’s Panopticon, Deleuzian schizoanalysis, and Zygmunt Bauman’s philosophy of liquid modernity. He continues this line of research by examining sites and spaces of surveillance through a highly interdisciplinary lens, with an emphasis on understanding the cultural effects of ubiquitous online surveillance.
Currently, his research interests include: critically evaluating the design of mobile interfaces, especially the paradigm of “user-friendliness”; the application of Deleuzian philosophy to questions of surveillance on the Internet, especially the question of the Internet’s ontology; and the politics of friendship as influenced by social media. He is particularly interested in how processes of “becoming friends” and “being friends” are affected by social media’s pervasive conditions of surveillance and commodification.
Department of Sociology, Queen's University (MA completed 2019)
2019- Joe Masoodi is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University. He has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Political Science (Brock) and Masters in War Studies (Royal Military College of Canada). He is currently interested in the relations between international/domestic security, surveillance studies, and information communication technologies. When Joe isn’t reading, he enjoys hiking, coffee and star gazing...though not in that particular order.
Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Canada (PhD completed 2019)
Post SSC- Debra Mackinnon is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary. She received her PhD in Sociology from Queen’s University in 2019. Her doctoral dissertation, “Mundane Surveillance: Tracking mobile applications and urban accounting in Canadian Business Improvement Areas” explored how technologies are used to police, account for, render, and manage urban space and populations. Broadly, her research interests include surveillance studies, urban studies, criminology, smart urban environments and IoT technologies, and qualitative methods. Her current work focuses on questions of digital (in)justice, inclusion and governance in smart city partnerships.
Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Canada (PhD completed 2020)
2020- Rui Hou is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Queen's University. His current research interests are in political sociology, sociology of emotions, contentious politics, and surveillance studies. Hou's doctoral project explores how for-profit organizations are engaged in dissent management in contemporary China. By qualitative methods, his research addresses the question by exploring the Chinese state-market collaboration in two sites where public dissent is channeled and neutralized: the Mayor's Hotline system (市長熱線) and the Internet-opinion industry (輿情產業).
Post SSC- Rui Hou, Postdoctoral Fellow, Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, Canada.
2018- With a BA (Honours) from Queen’s University, and an MA from the University of Toronto, Michael Carter is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s focused on ’smart cities’. He is supervised by Dr. David Murakami Wood. For his thesis he is researching the benefits, risks and governance models associated with the collection, analysis and sharing of personal mobility data in the context of public transit systems. He is interested in the futures of multi-modality, payment processing, trip planning and mobility as a service, and their convergences. Michael is currently conducting a case study on the Presto smart card system in the City of Toronto. This work is in conjunction with research on the Google spin-offs Coord and Sidewalk Labs, particularly their activity in the City of Toronto.
Department of Cultural Studies, Queen's University, Canada (PhD completed 2017)
2017- Tabasum Akseer is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies Program at Queen’s University. She has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Masters of Education, both from Brock University. Tabasum’s current research investigates the use of surveillance technologies as national security measures. When she isn’t reading or writing, Tabasum enjoys anything but hiking, coffee or star gazing.
Post SSC- Tabasum Akseer, Director, Policy and Research, The Asia Foundation, Afganistan.
Report "Beyond Big Data Surveillance: Freedom and Fairness" sheds light on big data surveillance in Canada To read the report in English, go here To read the report in French,... Read more about @title...
