David Lyon

Background

About David Lyon

Over the past 30 years, surveillance of many kinds has been my main research focus, seen both in my sole-authored books and in the products of team research. I have attempted to show how surveillance is a central feature of modern societies, affecting all our everyday lives and challenging us to appropriate ethical and political action. This is seen in high relief in the post-9/11 era and brought into clearer sight following the disclosures by Edward Snowden, to each of which I have devoted a book. The international and multidisciplinary project (2015-2021) on Big Data Surveillance raised new questions, not only about new forms of predictive analysis but also about our daily dependence on the digital, through cell phones and the internet. These follow through to more urgent questions prompted by AI surveillance. My book, Pandemic Surveillance (Polity 2022) ventured to address wider questions of the surveillance surge prompted by the golabl pandemic. It also picked up some themes from The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life (Polity 2018). Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction appeared from Oxford (2024) and I'm now working towards a book with the tentative title, Surveillance and the Eye of God: Medieval Roots, Modern Shoots. Needless to say, I depend on colleagues in medieval history to assist and guide me in this unfamiliar venture! I am now professor emeritus at Queen's University. A fuller summary is at sscqueens.org/davidlyon