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. Creating an international network of researchers on new tech-driven urban zones, enclaves and city-states. We had the first first major workshop in October 2025 at uOttawa, and the next one will be at Oxford in December 2026. In between there has been a lot of other activity…
2. Research and writing on both state-directed, tech-driven urban megaprojects, like Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, and both individual Silicon Valley-backed start-up cities, like Próspera, Telosa and Destiny City, and the increasing number of international networks that generate and support them, for example the Free Cities Foundation, the Network School, and the Praxis Network State.
3. A year-long SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, which is surveying, translating and summarizing the Chinese language literature on (post-)smart cities from China and Taiwan.

My former postdoc, Jennie Day and I recently 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…