PhD
Patrick Derby
Krystle Maki
Jeffrey Monaghan
Sachil Singh
Ozgun Topak
Daniel Trottier
Masters
Danielle Dawson
Aliya Kassam
Stephanie Nairn
Christine Sebben
Harrison Smith
Visiting Students
Francesca Menichelli
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Patrick Derby
Department of Sociology, Queen’s University
Patrick Derby is currently a doctoral student at Queen’s University, and a student member of the Surveillance Studies Centre. He is also a member of the Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN). Patrick received his BA in Criminology (Honours) and Sociology (Concentration), as well as his MA in Criminology from the University of Ottawa. His MA thesis was entitled: “Interrogating the Selective Gaze of Canadian CCTV Operators: Perspectives From Behind the Camera’s Lens”. Patrick is currently interested in bringing the theoretical resources of Science and Technology Studies to bear on criminological understandings of contemporary crime control practices. He is currently monitoring the proliferation of video surveillance in taxis across Canada, as well as the use of licence plate recognition technologies in Canadian police cruisers.
Krystle Maki
Department of Sociology, Queen’s University
Krystle Maki's research interests involve understanding the connections between neoliberal welfare state restructuring and the increased surveillance of those living on social assistance. Specifically, she is interested in investigating the classed, gendered and racialized consequences of welfare surveillance administered by Ontario Works (welfare). More broadly, her research draws from a number of theoretical and methodological frameworks informed by: Welfare studies, Socialist Feminist theory, Social Movements, Participatory Action Based Research, Welfare Surveillance, Anti-Racist Feminism, Social Control, and personal experience with social movement activism.
Krystle's dissertation will explore the uncharted relationship between Ontario Works (OW) and surveillance and its affects on recipients, service providers and community advocacy groups. This project builds upon her Master’s thesis, ‘Guilty Until Proven Eligible: Welfare Surveillance of Single Mothers in Ontario’ (2009), in which her research analyzed eight surveillance practices administered by OW uncovered in welfare legislation, regulations, acts and policies.
Link to webpage: http://www.queensu.ca/sociology/?q=people/graduate-students/krystle-maki
Jeffrey Monaghan
Department of Sociology, Queen's University
Jeffrey Monaghan is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at Queen's University and a student member of the New Transparency Project. Areas of research interest include policing and surveillance, (in)security processes, and the internationalization of surveillance and security 'best practices.' He completed an MA in the Law department at Carleton University, under the supervision of Dawn Moore. His thesis used archival materials to explore the 1880s surveillance and policing strategies of the North-West Mounted Police. He has published in journals such as Policing and Society, Alternatives, Social Movement Studies, and Upping the Anti.
Sachil Singh
Department of Sociology, Queen’s University
Sachil Singh is a PhD candidate at Queen's University, under the supervision of Dr David Lyon. Sachil received his Bachelor, Honours and Masters Degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. For these Degrees, he majored in Economics, Internet Studies, Economic History and Development Studies. His Masters thesis (completed in 2008) is titled "The Political Economy of Africa's Cyberspace". His ongoing interest in the relationships between technology and society has manifested in his current doctoral work for which he is researching the social effects of consumer surveillance in South Africa's credit economy. Sachil has published on the political economy of the post-apartheid South African 'information society'. He is also the co-author, with David Lyon, of a forthcoming chapter (on digital consumption) for Routledge. Sachil is the organiser of the Surveillance Studies Centre Seminar Series, which is held bi-monthly. For a more detailed personal biography, please click here.
Email: sachil.singh[at]queensu.ca
Phone: 613-533-6000 ext. 75602
Ozgun E. Topak
Department of Sociology, Queen’s University
Ozgun Topak is a PhD student at Queen’s University. He received his previous degrees from Istanbul University (BA in Business Administration) and Middle East Technical University (MA in Sociology) in Turkey. He is broadly interested in how new surveillance mechanisms (e.g. e-government, electronic ID cards, databases) are tied to a complex set of power-knowledge and political rationalities within different social contexts (e.g. Turkey, European Union). His PhD project focuses on the implementation of database technology in European Union border management strategies and the consequences of this process on European citizenship. Among others, his work is particularly inspired by Foucauldian and Deleuzian political philosophy.
Daniel Trottier (PhD completed 2010)
Department of Sociology, Queen’s University
My doctoral research focuses on the emergence of new surveillance practices through social media. Under Dr. David Lyon’s supervision, I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews to assess the impact of sites like Facebook on relations between individuals, institutions, and corporations. I have presented my findings to several international conferences as well as national news outlets. While at Queen’s I taught undergraduate courses on information and communication technologies as well as surveillance studies. I also organized the SSC’s yearlong seminar series since 2006.
I am now engaged in a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta with NewT co-investigator, Kevin Haggerty.
Link to webpage: http://www.sociology.ualberta.ca/FacultyStaffandGraduateStudent/AcademicVisitors.aspx
Danielle Dawson
Department of Sociology, Queen's University
Danielle Dawson is an MA candidate at Queen’s University with ties to the Surveillance Studies Centre (SSC) and the Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN). Working in the faculty of Sociology, Danielle studies the social and surveillant aspects of information and communication technologies with particular interest in current applications of radiofrequency identification technologies.
Aliya Kassam
Department of Sociology, Queen's University
After discovering surveillance studies during her BAH in Sociology, Aliya Kassam chose to stay on at Queen’s University for her Masters to further explore the emerging discipline. She has focused her research attention on the contemporary political climate in the West – specifically, she is concerned with whether the rise of coordinated surveillance efforts reify the (in)formal processes of Islamophobia.
Stephanie Nairn
Department of Sociology, Queen's University
Stephanie Nairn is a graduate student at Queen’s University. She is currently completing her Master’s research on the everyday experience of life-threatening food allergy, examining the ways in which individuals with allergies negotiate risk in consumption of food, information and medical ‘knowledge’. This involves a critical examination of how allergy is experienced differently within and across various social, cultural and political contexts and how it is regulated and policed.
Stephanie is also interested in the representations of surveillance in popular culture and how these understandings and perceptions either compliment and/or challenge ‘traditional’ definitions/representations. She actively attends SSC seminars/events and has presented at several international surveillance conferences.
Stephanie is currently a teaching assistant for SOCY325 (Contemporary Social Theory) and SOCY306 (Consumer Culture) at Queen’s University.
Christine Sebben
Department of Sociology, Queen's University
I am a master’s candidate in the department of sociology at Queen's University working under the supervision of Dr. David Lyon. I received my BA in Sociology (Honours) from the University of Calgary with a concentration in criminology, deviance and social control. I also hold a diploma in Behavioural Science Technology (with distinction) from St. Lawrence College.
My research interest is national security and threat analysis. More specifically, I am interested in how the events that are deemed a threat to Canadians are managed, with a specific focus on border control as a site of surveillance. Post 9/11, security has been placed at the forefront of policy, with notions of pre-emptive social control increasingly favoured and implemented. Concerns have been raised that an overarching emphasis on security jeopardizes liberty by infringing fundamental rights and freedoms as well as fracturing the rule of law. My research endeavors to analyze the complexities associated with national security, while remaining realistic about the possibilities of intervention.<
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Harrison Smith (MA completed 2011)
Department of Sociology, Queen's University
I am deeply fascinated by benign technologies which do not quite exist yet. My research focuses on ambient intelligence systems, ubiquitous computing and augmented reality. Simply put, the future trends in microprocessing technologies which are fast on the horizon in urban living environments. Such technological trends necessarily create new possibilities for the scope and depth of surveillance, becoming evermore omnipresent yet invisible.
Given that these sorts of technologies are very broad and still in their infancy, it follows that I am also interested in the processes of their design and implementation, including the particular actors and social networks in which such technological artifacts are embedded within. Political economy and actor-network theory are thus my primary tools for ascertaining how such technologies are, and will soon become, a reality in everyday urban social life.
My secondary research interests are many, most importantly urban geography, the social history of communications technology, consumer culture and everyday life.
I have a Bachelor of arts (Honours) from Queen's University: sociology major, philosophy minor. In addition, I hold a diploma in photojournalism from Loyalist College. Finally, I am a certified and practicing Hatha yoga instructor at a local yoga studio.
I have a blog which details the particulars of this type of research:
http://ambienteyes.wordpress.com/
Francesca Menichelli
Università degli studi di Milano-Bicocca
Francesca Menichelli is a Ph.D. candidate in urban sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, where she is working under the supervision of Professor Fabio Quassoli. Francesca received her BA in Communication from the University of Siena and attended the University of Bologna for her MA, where her interest in the topics of surveillance and security first emerged. For her Masters thesis she studied the security system of a mid-sized airport in Northern Italy and she is further pursuing these themes in her Ph.D. at the University of Milano-Bicocca, where she has spent the last two years focusing on the topics of social control, surveillance and crime, with particular emphasis on video surveillance.
For her doctoral thesis she is conducting comparative research on how public area video surveillance has transformed the ways in which control and authority are exercised over territory. This comparative work specifically intends to take into account the role played by locally-grounded political cultures. Having completed the fieldwork components of her research, she has joined the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University as a visiting research student until November 2011, working under the supervision of Dr. David Murakami Wood.
