The webinar will feature approximately two hours of conversations. The first hour will feature Wood, Browne, Schuurman and Swanlund, and in the second hour Peppin, D’Ignazio and Park. After making short presentations about their recent work and projects, the participants will be in conversation with each other and respond to provocations from the moderator and from audience questions. The aim is to keep the conversation lively and loose.

Please note that the webinar will not be recorded.

Jeremy W. Crampton Newcastle University

Jeremy W. Crampton is Professor of Urban Data Analysis at Newcastle University. His work focuses on place-based interactions between geolocational technologies and our everyday experience and wellbeing in the built environment. He studies the critical geographies of surveillance, spatial big data and algorithmic decision-making and the way these are governed. In response to COVID-19 he is interested in how geolocational technologies and “Slow AI” can best build the pandemic-ready city. He is currently writing a book entitled The Map and the Spyglass: The New Geographical Analytics of Everyday Life to be published by Verso.

Aidan Peppin Ada Lovelace Institute

Aidan Peppin is a Senior Researcher for public engagement at the Ada Lovelace Institute, where he works to ensure public perspectives inform digital technology design, practice and policy. Throughout 2020 he led the Citizens’ Biometrics Council, which brought 50 UK citizens together to deliberate on biometric technology, and currently he leads Ada’s work on a public dialogue on location data, commissioned by the UK’s Geospatial Commission.

Simone Browne University of Texas at Austin

Simone Browne is Associate Professor of Black Studies and Research Director of Critical Surveillance Inquiry with Good Systems, at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently writing her second book manuscript, Like the Mixture of Charcoal and Darkness, which examines the interventions made by artists whose works grapple with the surveillance of Black life, from policing, privacy, smart dust and the FBI’s COINTELPRO to encryption, electronic waste and artificial intelligence. Together, these essays explore the productive possibilities of creative innovation when it comes to troubling surveillance and its various tactics, and imagining Black life beyond the surveillance state. Simone is the author of Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.

David Swanlund Simon Fraser University

David Swanlund is a PhD Candidate at Simon Fraser University, where he researches GIScience approaches to understanding geoprivacy and its protection. This includes research into geographic masks, techniques used to anonymize spatial data, as well as privacy-preserving visualization techniques. His Masters research explored the impacts of biometrics on geoprivacy as well as tactics and strategies for resisting surveillance.

Nadine Schuurman Simon Fraser University

Nadine Schuurman is a health geographer who also has an interest and history in critical GIScience. She is keen to understand the motivation and possible outcomes related to widespread surveillance through social media.

Catherine D'Ignazio Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Catherine D'Ignazio is a hacker mama, scholar, and artist/designer who focuses on feminist technology, data literacy and civic engagement. She has run women’s health hackathons, designed global news recommendation systems, created talking and tweeting water quality sculptures, and led walking data visualizations to envision the future of sea level rise. Her 2020 book from MIT Press, Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein, charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science practices. D’Ignazio is an assistant professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT where she is the Director of the Data + Feminism Lab.

David Murakami Wood Queen's University

David Murakami Wood is an interdisciplinary scholar of cities, security and surveillance. Wood is happiest in the worlds of Surveillance Studies and Urban Studies, but also feels quite at home amongst Human Geographers and Sociologists. Having started off in History, Wood also tends to want to start by looking for the roots of phenomena and the long-term trajectories. But Wood has also been an environmental and social justice activist an so, wants research to be relevant and potentially lead to changes for the better.

Tina M. Park Partnership on AI

Tina M. Park is the Methods for Inclusion Research Fellow, developing evidence-based methodologies for incorporating a more diverse range of stakeholders in the design and development of artificial intelligence. Her broader scholarship focuses on the examination of research designs and theoretical frameworks used by social scientists to study race and racism, including its manifestations in digital technology and datasets. Prior to her Ph.D., she was a researcher with NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy looking at the impact of the Great Recession on housing market prices. She also worked as an economic development consultant with AECOM (formerly Economics Research Associates) and Entertainment + Culture Advisors to help private and public sector partners develop sustainable real estate development projects around the world.

Tina received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University, a Master’s in Urban Planning from New York University, and a B.A. in Political Science (with minors in Chicana/o Studies and Public Policy) from the University of California, Los Angeles. She was also a Public Affairs Fellow with the Southern California Coro Foundation.