Gavin Smith

Research Associate

Gavin Smith is a Senior Lecturer at The Australian National University He was previously a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at The University of Sydney and, before that, a Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at City University London. Whilst at The University of Sydney, Gavin founded and directed The Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group, an interdisciplinary collective of scholars interested in critically exploring everyday manifestations of surveillance. The group are soon to produce a special issue of Surveillance & Society (2013) based on their recent research activities. Gavin?s early work considered the everyday practices and embodied imaginaries of CCTV camera operators as they ordered and made sense of the mediated events to which they were routinely exposed. His current research investigates the interplay among surveillance systems and subjects, particularly the interpretive meanings individuals ascribe to surveillance encounters/exchanges and the social implications of our becoming a cyborg organism comprised of biomatter and informatic code.

Gavin is the author of many reviews, book chapters, journal articles and media reports on the social impacts and implications of ubiquitous surveillance and has two books forthcoming. The first, Opening the Black Box: Surveillance in Everyday Life, will appear in mid-2013 (Routledge Advances in Sociology Series) and the second, Key Concepts in Visibility and Surveillance Studies (co-edited with Dr Martin French (New York University), will be published in late-2013/early 2014 (Sage Key Concepts Series). He is an international collaborator on The New Transparency Project (an MCRI project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and is an editor of the international journal, Surveillance & Society. He is also an Honorary Visiting Fellow at The Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism, City University London. He is regularly consulted by the media to provide comment on a variety of topics.