Research

I’m currently working on a big set of new projects around what I call Platform Cities in an Age of Planetary Surveillance, in which I examine new platform capitalist urban developments in relation to concepts of surveillance, the future of humanity and the climate crisis.

In 2025, I have been working on two components of this:

1. Planning and holding a major invited workshop in October, the Global Governance of Post-Smart Cities: Enclaves, Zones and City-States, which is funded by a SSHRC Connection Grant, with support from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), the Research Centre on the Future of Cities, the Centre for Law, Technology & Society (CLTS), and the University of Ottawa’s UO Connect scheme. The workshop will bring around 35 international and local scholars, senior and early career, who are studying various aspects of post-smart cities. The results will be reported on soon…
2. A year-long SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, which is surveying and summarizing the literature on (post-)smart cities from China, Taiwan and Singapore, in both Chinese and English languages.

My postdoc, Jennie Day and I have just completed a project funded through the Human-Centric Cybersecurity Partnership called ‘Hired Hackers and Private Spies’, examining the whole world of private surveillance companies. Publications will be forthcoming I am currently examining where to take this next…