SSC Seminar Series

Ciara Bracken-Roche, Post-doctoral fellow, University of Ottawa

Navigating Canadian Drone Space: A Sociological Analysis of the Stakeholders, Narratives, and Policy Shaping Canadian Unmanned Systems

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

12:30 – 2 pm

Mackintosh Corry Hall D411

Drawing from documents collected through Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests and interview data with Canadian drone stakeholders, this presentation argues that the Canadian drone space is driven by the surveillance-industrial... Read more about @title...

Steven Richardson and Debra Mackinnon

Left to their own Devices? The rise of wearables in the workplace

Wednesday, December 6, 2017
, 12:30 – 2 pm


Mackintosh Corry Hall D411

Emerging trends in wearable technology include ergonomic sensors for occupational health and safety, biometric sensors for professional athletes, augmented reality headsets for shipping and receiving, and smart ID badges for personnel tracking and remote monitoring.... Read more about @title...

Wednesday November 29, 12:30 – 2:00pm

MacCorry Hall, Room D411 (Sociology lounge)

Marjolein Lanzing, Eindhoven University of Technology

Big Brothers and Little Sisters

Recent empirical research regarding young women’s experiences on social media platforms points out the tension between the participatory, empowering aspects of social network sites (SNS) for the development of meaningful social interaction, relationships and identity construction on the one hand, and... Read more about @title...

Surveillance Studies Centre Seminar Wednesday November 8, 12:30 – 2:00pm

Goodes Hall, Room 308.

Toronto as Google City: Sidewalk Labs and Surveillance Capitalism

Shoshana Zuboff, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School

Shoshana Zuboff joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1981. In 2014 and 2015 she was a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at... Read more about @title...

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

12:30 – 2 pm

Mackintosh Corry Hall D411 

Dennis Molinaro

The Bridge in the Park: Reflections on Law, Security and the Normalization of Surveillance

Security has often been used as a justification for the creation of a host of laws and regulations, some public, some secret. While we can debate the necessity of the measures, we can also challenge the notion... Read more about @title...

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

12:30 – 2 pm

Mackintosh Corry Hall D411 

Materialised (dis)trust: Mapping the dynamics of WhatsApp neighbourhood watchfulness practices

WhatsApp neighbourhood watch groups are an already ubiquitous phenomenon in the Netherlands despite having only recently emerged. This study draws on an in-depth and multidimensional examination of the ‘watchfulness’ practices of members of these groups through interviews and focus groups. It begins... Read more about @title...

Socio-technical processes and institutional design of digital trust infrastructures: privacy protection in online social network sites

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

12:30 – 2 pm

Mackintosh Corry Hall D411 

Contemporary privacy practices, as well as big data surveillance, that are constituted among users of online social network sites (OSNs), challenge, in many cases, established regulatory approaches of data protection and understandings of privacy. In this... Read more about @title...

Mackintosh-Corry Hall D411

(Sociology Lounge)

We start the Surveillance Studies Centre Seminar Series with the annual "Research Round-up".  The aim of this meeting is to give everyone the opportunity to welcome new and returning students, staff and faculty and update each other on recent and ongoing research as it relates to surveillance studies.  New and returning members welcome!

Pizza provided!

Kindly R.S.V.P to Joan... Read more about @title...

Then the Whites Came and Made Us Indians: Law, Categorization, Technologies of Governance, and the Criminalization of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples of Canada

 Wednesday, April 12th, 2017

12:30 – 2 pm

Mackintosh Corry Hall Room D411 

In 1953 a man holding the position of “Indian Councillor” stood up to a provincial government envoy saying; “We were the first settlers... Read more about @title...

Evelyn Ruppert

Data Politics: Worlds, Subjects, Rights

 Wednesday, March 29, 2017

12:30 – 2 pm

Mackintosh Corry Hall Room D214 

(Grad Students are also invited to join Evelyn Ruppert for an informal discussion in Mac-Corry Room C512 from 10.30 to 11.30 before her seminar.)

Data has been constituted as an object vested with certain powers, influence, and rationalities. Ruppert places the emergence and transformation of professional... Read more about @title...