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Associate Professor Gavin J.D. Smith
Contacts
I joined ANU in 2012. I was previously a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at The University of Sydney and a Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at City University London. Prior to joining the academy, I completed an ESRC-funded PhD (2009) at The University of Aberdeen on the culture of CCTV operation. I hold from the same university an MA in Sociology and an MRes in Social Research Methods.
While in Sydney, I helped establish The Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group, an interdisciplinary collective of scholars interested in the cultural drivers and impacts of surveillance practices. The group's activities have resulted in special issues/sections of Surveillance & Society (2013), Critical Public Health (2013) and Body & Society (2016).
I am an international collaborator on The New Transparency Project (an MCRI project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and an editor of Surveillance & Society. I am on the executive board of the Surveillance Studies Network. I have previously been a Research Associate in the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, and a Visiting Researcher at Concordia University, Canada. I am currently a Visiting Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at The University of Edinburgh. I am also a Research Associate in The Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism, City University London, and an International Research Associate in the Centre for Business Information Ethics, Meiji University, Japan. I am regularly consulted by the media on surveillance and security matters.
Research interests
I am a generalist sociologist and snake ecologist interested in conceptualising more-than-human relations in various ecosocial fields.
That is to say, I am interested in the social relations that shape and emerge from interactions that occur between human and non-human social agents, things and environments.
Most of my research has explored the social impacts of surveillance, specifically looking at the intersubjective meanings ascribed to everyday practices of watching and being watched, be that through CCTV camera surveillance systems or via social media cultures. I am now actively researching these kinds of relations as they pertain to the use of facial recognition technologies in various contexts as part of an ARC Discovery Project, When your face is your ID: Public responses to automated facial recognition (2020-2024)
Other current research I'm doing explores the ambiguous figure of the snake in Australian society. This is a double edged project examining social and cultural perceptions of snakes, both historically and in the contemporary period, but also how social agents engage with these animals in everyday life. Building on the sociality of snakes, the second component of the research involves conducting snake ecology research, and tracking a sample of Eastern brown snakes (Pseudonaja textilis) in Canberra to better determine habitat use and movement profiles post-release.
Twitter: @gavin_jd_smith
Groups
- Researcher, Biodiversity
- Researcher, Psychology, communication and the arts
- Researcher, Risk, vulnerability and resilience