Surveillance & Everyday Life Research Group

Forthcoming International Conference

Surveillance in Everyday Life:

Monitoring Pasts, Presents and Futures

 Featuring Professor David Lyon, Queen’s University, Canada

February 20^th – 21^st 2012

Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney

Flyer download

Call for papers

The intensification and diversification of surveillance in recent decades has been remarkable. CCTV cameras, private investigators, loyalty cards, body scanners, DNA swabs, RFID tags, Web 2.0 platforms/protocols and internet cache cookies constitute only some of the many instruments facilitating the routine extraction and collection of personal information at transactional ‘points of contact’. Advancement in technological applications, and wider cultures of risk, uncertainty, distrust and consumption, have all helped to legitimate and naturalize surveillance as a multi-purpose tool in the everyday lives of individuals and organizations. Yet, whilst surveillance seems increasingly embedded in the physical and cultural fabric of contemporary life, and whilst surveillance today is qualitatively and quantitatively different from previous forms, it is by no means a new phenomenon. From time immemorial, detailed records have been accumulated on the health, morality, cognitive development, motivations, sexualities, incomes, work activities and whereabouts of human beings – not to mention on animal relations, planetary constellations, environmental conditions, and the like. In the past, as in the present, forms of life have been and are targeted by intensive monitoring regimes. Moreover, surveillance seems set to dominate the future organization of human societies and social relations; but in what form and with what implications?

This conference will consider the significance of everyday surveillance in relation to temporality, exploring the changing nature of surveillance as it relates to cultural specificities, past transformations, present landscapes and possible/emergent futures.

 Important dates:

Call for papers/panels to be circulated: August 1^st 2011

Abstracts (250words) due: September 26^th 2011

Acceptance letters distributed: October 24^th 2011

Registration opens: October 31^st 2011

Full (5000-7000words) papers due: January 16^th 2012

Registration deadline: February 1^st 2012

The schedule for the Symposium

Exposing Bodies: Surveillance and Embodiment

is now finalised and available online.

For details and pdf download of the full programme click the tab Exposing Bodies/schedule.

To view all presenter abstracts click here (Pdf download here)

The symposium dinner for

Exposing Bodies: Surveillance and Embodiment

will take place at The Spicy Sichuan Restaurant

1-9 Glebe Point Rd
Glebe NSW 2009
(02) 9660 8200

If you want to know more, click on the name and check out their webpage.

The price is AUD 50.00 pp. If you would like to register please click here.

The first Symposium in a series of three, organised by the Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group at the University of Sydney, is now in preparation.

The Symposium

‘Exposing Bodies: Surveillance and Embodiment’

An interdisciplinary symposium run by The Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group

will take place on Friday 8 July 2011,

in the New Law Building Level 4, Faculty Common Room, Eastern Avenue,

The University of Sydney.

To view the Call for papers you can either click on the tab Exposing Bodies Symposium/Call for Papers or download as a Pdf here.

Symposium Themes

• Bodily Identification, Profiling & Biometrics
• Biomechanics & Comportment Analytics (including recognition softwares, algorithms etc.)
• Normal/Abnormal Bodies & Classificatory Politics
• Biotechnology & Bioengineering
• Biopower & Objectivation
• Bodily Exhibitionism & Performativity
• Cyborgs, Robotics & Alternative Bodies
• Disease Monitoring and Non-Human Bodies
• Bodies in Sport & Mass Mediated Sporting Mega-Events
• Bodily Regulation & Discipline
• Body Images & Mediation
• Distributed Bodies & Bodily Flows
• Bodily Im/mobility
• Biocapital, Biobanking & Bioeconomy
• Disappearing Bodies & Re-emergent Codes

Symposium Keynotes

• Professor Catherine Waldby, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Sydney: ‘Biobanking in Singapore: Post-developmental state, experimental population’
• Dr Charlotte Epstein, Department of Government and International Relations, The University of Sydney: ‘The Big Other Is Watching You: Surveillance, Sovereignty, Subjectivities’

Welcome to the website of the Sydney University’s

The Surveillance and Everyday Life

Research Group

‘The Everyday Life of Surveillance’ project brings together a number of early career, mid career and distinguished scholars across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – and wider university community – to critically and collaboratively examine the everyday production and experience of surveillance, an issue of rapidly increasing social, historical, political, economic and local‐global significance.

Part of the activities will be a series of Symposia which aim to discuss and disseminate the knowledge gained.

If you want to find out more on the research themes and about the members of the group, please press the ABOUT tab above.