Invitation to host Surveillance Studies Network 10th Biennial Conference 2024 

The Surveillance Studies Network invites expressions of interest to host the 10^th Biennial Conference in 2024. The conference brings together scholars, artists, and activists working broadly in the area of surveillance. It has become increasingly popular year on year and always receives a very positive response from the community. Now in its 10th iteration, we are delighted to be inviting expressions of interest to host the next conference in 2024. More information about previous conferences can be found here: https://www.surveillance-studies.net/?page_id=4.

Outlined below is a draft specification for what hosting the conference would require and an indicative budget. If you and your institution would be interested in hosting the conference on this basis, we invite you to submit an expression of interest (EOI). Your EOI should contain information about your institution, your capacity and experience in administering such events, why you want to host it, an estimated conference preparation timeline, what added value you bring (especially why your institution would be an attractive venue to prospective delegates), how accessible the conference venue is (both in terms of being accessible for those with special needs, but also convenient access to mass transit and transportation hubs), and a number of proposals for the conference theme (the conference should have a broad theme so as to be attractive to the diverse range of disciplines and topics that fall under the surveillance studies umbrella). You should also include indicative costs for room hire, daily delegate catering rate, local admin support, delegate packs, technology costs, and website development. SSN especially welcomes bids from the Global South. The Directors of SSN will choose the venue for the 2024 conference based on a review of the submitted EOIs.

If you are interested in submitting an EOI or if you have questions please get in touch with David Murakami Wood, chair of the SSN2024 Organizing Committee, to receive the full application pack: david.mw@uottawa.ca

Please send your expression of interest to host SSN2024 to ssn@surveillance-studies.net and david.mw@uottawa.ca.

Basic specifications for host institution

Date:                                     May or June 2024    

Duration                              3.5-4 days

Capacity                               250-person capacity Lecture Theatre with full AV, plus a minimum of 7 fully AV equipped rooms available nearby with 60+ capacity each. At least 2 of the rooms including the main Lecture Theatre should be online-ready to support virtual/hybrid streaming of the events in those rooms.

Language                             The language of the conference is English.

Atrium/Foyer                     To cater for lunch/tea and coffee breaks/art installations – near to breakout room

Catering                               3 X teas and coffee per day, 1 X buffet lunch per day, plus a          conference dinner      .

Accommodation:              It is easier if delegates arrange their own accommodation at local hotels but this requires the venue to be a reasonably large city. If the host institution can arrange accommodation that is fine, but we would advise against this because the administration can be difficult, and it often requires a firm block-booking months in advance and payment up front.

Conference organisation

The conference organising committee consists of:

• At least  three SSN Board members (including one SSN Director)
• Two or three members of the host institution (one of whom will be the conference director)

The SSN members of the committee will support the host institution in providing feedback and advice during regular organizing committee calls. Final decisions about the conference theme, registration fees, budget, programme, etc., will be made by the organizing committee. SSN will be responsible for determining the keynotes, award ceremonies of SSN prizes and promoting the conference.

Structure of conference:

A 3.5-4-day conference should enable two plenary sessions and 6-7 streams of parallel sessions each day.

Poster sessions or other activities to encourage Master and Doctoral student involvement in the conference, and are encouraged.

Additionally, the proposal and development of a doctoral student colloquium as part of the overall program is required. This could occur, for example, in the morning or afternoon prior to the regular conference.

The Host institution would be responsible for:

• Reporting on budget, planning, and preparation milestones to SSN in advance of the conference
• Developing and running the conference website
• Securing lecture rooms, break out rooms, meal facilities, and catering on time
• Creating an online conference paper archive – password protected
• Producing a conference accommodation and travel guide for on the conference website
• Publicizing the conference through social media and mailing lists
• Fully responsible for organising, managing, and scheduling the conference sessions, plenaries, keynotes and associated activities, this includes management of the submission of abstracts, the review process, scheduling the abstracts in conference sessions, and drafting the final programme
• Creating the conference pack containing a programme booklet including abstracts, delegate list, timetable etc. Organising the conference dinner.
• Administering conference registration and payment preferably through electronic means, and collecting SSN membership subscriptions via the same mechanism
• All preconference administration and communication including answering delegate’s queries and sending out emails to the delegates with info about the conference and communication with the keynotes with regards to scheduling, travel and accommodation.
• Management of front desk and onsite logistics throughout the conference.

Call for Proposals: SSN Small Research Grants (2022-23)

We are pleased to announce the 2022-23 Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) Small Research Grant competition. The SSN Small Grants scheme provides funding to support junior/early-career scholars working in economically under-resourced regions of the world. This year, we will be able to fund two awards of up to £1500 each, to be used during the 2022-2023 academic year in support of surveillance studies research (for more information about what constitutes surveillance studies research, we recommend reviewing articles published in Surveillance & Society (http://surveillance-and-society.org/), the SSN’s international journal of surveillance studies). These awards will also be accompanied by a two-year SSN membership. The Small Grants Committee will review and select recipients based on the following criteria and process.

Eligibility

Surveillance Studies Network members (or non-members who conduct surveillance-related research and would like to become part of SSN) are encouraged to apply, with preference given to persons who:

• justify themselves as working in an economically under-resourced region;
• are early career researchers (i.e., a doctoral student or researcher who has earned their PhD in the last five years);
• have not previously received funding through the SSN Small Research Grant; and,
• submit all required materials prior to the application deadline.

Evaluation Criteria

We will be evaluating applications based on their articulation of specific research-related activities that would significantly augment the applicant’s program of research, but that would not be feasible without additional funding. Additionally, we will take into consideration the overall feasibility of the proposed work and the extent to which it is likely to make a significant contribution to surveillance studies

Process

Please submit a brief proposal (approximately 1 page, single spaced) outlining:

• the activities to be conducted with the funding,
• the importance of these activities to your program of research,
• justification of your region of residence as economically under-resourced,
• description of your suitability for the award based on the other criteria of preference, and
• a timeline for completion of the activities planned. (All awarded funds must be spent by September 30, 2023).

Additionally, please submit a budget (1-page maximum) outlining your plans for using any awarded funds up to a maximum of £1500 (e.g., transcription services, informant/human-subjects payments, travel costs to conduct field research, technical equipment, conference fees, etc.).

Send your proposal and budget as one document (PDF preferred) to Pinelopi Troullinou at pinelopi.troullinou@trilateralresearch.com on or before September 01, 2022. Please include the following text in your email subject header: “SSN Small Grants Application.” Notification of awards will be made as soon as possible after the deadline.

Post-Award Expectations

Successful applicants will be asked to submit a post-award report outlining the research they conducted using the funds and noting how the SSN Small Grant contributed to the success and implementation of their research. These reports will be due on April 1 in the year following the award. Additionally, applicants may be invited to publish a “Research Note” on our blog Blink (https://medium.com/surveillance-and-society) or in a future issue of Surveillance & Society (for more information about this form of contribution to the journal, see the journal’s submission page at https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/about/submissions). 

Save the Date!

9th Biennial Surveillance Studies Network Conference

Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1-3 June 2022

More information about the conference and the call for papers will follow in September 2021

Dear Colleagues,

We are very excited to announce a call for contributions to a joint Dialogue Section-Art Forum of Surveillance & Society we are calling “Surveillance Stories: Imagining Surveillance Futures.” Storytelling has the ability to capture the imagination and to attract a wide audience. Stories can also generate important meanings, engage metaphors, and explore new possibilities in ways that conventional academic papers often cannot, or at least typically do not.

Therefore, for this special project, we invite contributions that creatively engage with the possibilities of the surveillant future. Submissions should inform how we ought to think about surveillance, regulate surveillance, or study surveillance to achieve/avoid the futures depicted in the stories. These pieces can take the form of a short narrative piece (~800 to 2000-words, if text-based; ~2-5 minutes if time-based media), including speculative stories. They can also involve artistic interventions that explore and visualize this topic. Contributions can be fictional, quasi-fictional, or nonfiction stories (presented in a narrative fashion) that draw on surveillance studies research and theory to imagine what possible surveillance futures might look like. 

Our interest here is to encourage stories that imagine utopian as well as dystopian futures, and that utilize creative text, images, video, and other forms of artistic expression (the range of media for artworks that can be presented is subject to the technological limitations of the journal’s platform, but can include video and limited photography or images—please get in touch if you have questions about what might be possible). For selected pieces, we will also request that authors include a closing paragraph or two at the end of each piece that specifically links the elements of the story to existing surveillance studies research (including research previously published in Surveillance & Society or elsewhere, or that builds on the authors’ own fieldwork or other research). (Media not based in text should also include a transcript of dialogue, basic description of the visuals, etc.)

Along with the narration of surveillant futures as a mode of creative address, our goal with this special project is to make space for explorations that focus on and derive from various regions and perspectives often under-represented in surveillance studies research. We are interested in bringing into conversation a collection of works that capture a range of approaches and from a multitude of viewpoints. As such, we will prioritize submissions against those criteria, in addition to excellence and fit with the full set of accepted pieces.

For inspiration and as examples of similar sorts of projects, we refer you to a new publication from the UW Tech Policy Lab, “Telling Stories” (https://techpolicylab.uw.edu/telling-stories/), that contains fictional stories about artificial intelligence. You may also find Dr. Casey Fiesler’s new paper, “Innovating like an Optimist, Preparing like a Pessimist: Ethical Speculation and the Legal Imagination” of interest (find it online at https://ctlj.colorado.edu/?page_id=1283). Within the Value Sensitive Design field, Nathan, Klasnja, and Friedman’s “Value Scenarios: A Technique for Envisioning Systemic Effects of New Technologies” (https://doi.org/10.1145/1240866.1241046) may also be of interest.  

Submission: 

If you are interested in proposing piece for the Surveillance Stories section, please send the following to us on or before the end of day on April 16, 2021 (to both bcnewell@uoregon.edu and susan.cahill@ucalgary.ca):

• Your name
• Details of your institutional affiliation (if applicable)
• Link to your online profile, website, etc., with list of your publications or artistic pieces (if available)
• A title and ~300- to 400-word abstract for your proposed contribution (which can describe the storytelling approach, the media to be used, and/or present a narrative element from the story)

Timeline:

Authors will be notified of initial acceptance decisions on or before May 15, 2021. Final drafts/versions of provisionally accepted pieces will be due on September 1, 2021. Final acceptance will follow shortly thereafter, with anticipated publication in the December 2021 issue of Surveillance & Society.

Please note that Dialogue and Art pieces are not refereed, but are subject to editorial review and, if (tentatively) accepted, possible requests for revision. Depending on time constraints, we also hope to allow authors of accepted contributions the chance to read or view and engage with the other accepted pieces prior to publication, to create a real dialogue within the section, when possible. We will only be selecting a limited number of pieces for inclusion in this special section. Recent Dialogue sections have focused on Surveillance and the COVID-19 Pandemic (coming in March 2021), Surveillance as Evidence, The State of Sousveillance, and Decolonizing Surveillance Studies.

We look forward to reading your proposals.