Through the stories of four women and one robot this talk situates blackness as an absented presence in the field of surveillance studies, and questions how a realization of the conditions of blackness—the historical, the present, and the historical present— can help social theorists understand our contemporary conditions of surveillance.

Simone Browne is an Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches and researches surveillance studies, digital media and black diaspora studies. Her first book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness examines surveillance with a focus on transatlantic slavery, biometric technologies, branding, airports and creative texts. Simone is an Executive Board member of HASTAC. She is also a member of Deep Lab, a feminist collaborative composed of artists, engineers, hackers, writers, and theorists.