York University’s undergraduate program in Criminology and graduate program in Socio-Legal Studies have collaborated to present their first annual lecture featuring surveillance expert and Queen’s University Professor David Lyon. The free event, open to the public, will take place at 5:30 p.m. on March 17 in room 105 Life Sciences Building at the Keele Campus.
As director of the Surveillance Studies Centre and Queen’s Research Chair in Surveillance Studies, Lyon has been researching surveillance from a sociological perspective for the past 25 years. His research has touched on numerous topics and issues relating to surveillance, including privacy, registration and identification systems, information technologies and the ethics and politics of social sorting. He will reflect on and draw from his lengthy exploration of this research area in a talk entitled “Surveillance yesterday, today and tomorrow: From occasional encounters to constant immersion.”
Beginning from the premise that surveillance is now an unavoidable fact of everyday life, this lecture will explore the massive changes taking place in surveillance worldwide, examining its relentlessness, intrusiveness, pervasiveness and divisiveness, and call for a reassertion of human judgement and democratic participation to challenge and to reshape surveillance towards human flourishing.
The Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies programs plan to collaborate with the Law and Society undergraduate program for next year’s edition of the lecture. This year’s lecture is also sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies.
While the lecture will be of particular interest to faculty and students in Criminology, Socio-Legal Studies, Communication Studies, Law and Society, Sociology, Science and Technology Studies, and Information Technology, those in other departments and members of the community are also encouraged to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.
A list of upcoming events hosted by departments, schools and programs in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies can be found on the faculty’s website.