Simone Browne
Associate Professor — Ph.D., Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies

Contact
- E-mail: sbrowne@austin.utexas.edu
- Campus Mail Code: E3400
Biography
Simone Browne is Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also Research Director of Critical Surveillance Inquiry (CSI) with Good Systems, a research collaborative at the University of Texas at Austin. CSI works with scholars, organizations and communities to curate conversations, exhibitions and research that examine the social and ethical implications of surveillance technologies, both AI-enabled and not. With a focus on algorithmic harm and tech equity, we continually question “what’s good?” in order to better understand the development and impact of artificial intelligence.
Simone is currently writing her second book manuscript, Like the Mixture of Charcoal and Darkness, which examines the interventions made by artists whose works grapple with the surveillance of Black life, from policing, privacy, smart dust and the FBI’s COINTELPRO to encryption, electronic waste and artificial intelligence. Together, these essays and interviews explore the productive possibilities of rebellious methodologies and creative innovation when it comes to troubling surveillance and its various tactics, and imagining Black life beyond the surveillance state.
Simone’s first book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, was awarded the 2016 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize by the American Studies Association, the 2016 Surveillance Studies Book Prize by the Surveillance Studies Network, and the 2015 Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Technology Research. Simone is also a member of Deep Lab, a feminist collaborative composed of artists, engineers, hackers, writers, and theorists. She is also a member of the Academic Council of AI NOW Institute, the Executive Board of HASTAC, a Board Member of The Dark Laboratory, a Community Advisory Board Member of the US Covid Atlas Project at the University of Chicago, A People's Guide to Tech Advisory Board Member, EPIC Advisory Board Member and a Member of the Scholars’ Council of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA.
Along with Deborah Cowen and Katherine McKittrick, Simone is series editor of Errantries at Duke University Press.
Simone is a 2021 Matakyev Research Fellow at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University.
During the spring 2021 semester, Simone will be the Gerald LeBoff Visiting Scholar at New York University.
Courses
AFR 360D • Race/Gender/Surveillance
31175 • Fall 2022
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM RLP 0.130
CDE
(also listed as AMS 321)
UGS 302 • Surveillance: An Introduction
62240 • Fall 2022
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM RLP 0.120
EWr
ID
AFR 387C • Surveillance: Art/Theory
31125 • Spring 2022
Meets M 11:00AM-2:00PM RLP 0.124
(also listed as WGS 393)
AFR 360D • Race/Gender/Surveillance
31505 • Fall 2021
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM RLP 0.130
CDE
(also listed as AMS 321)
UGS 302 • Surveillance: An Introduction
62405 • Fall 2021
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM JES A205A
Wr
ID
AFR 387D • Surveillance: Art/Theory
31240 • Spring 2021
Meets T 11:00AM-2:00PM
Hybrid/Blended
(also listed as WGS 393)
UGS 302 • Surveillance: An Introductn-Wb
60375 • Fall 2020
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM
Internet; Synchronous
Wr
ID
AFR 372C • Race/Gender/Surveillance
30100 • Fall 2019
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM RLP 0.130
CDE
(also listed as AMS 321, SOC 322V, WGS 322)
UGS 302 • Surveillance: An Introduction
60640 • Fall 2019
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM CAL 323
Wr
ID
AFR 322D • Race And The Digital
29694 • Spring 2018
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PMA 5.112
GCWr
(also listed as WGS 322)
AFR 381 • Race And The Body
29933 • Spring 2018
Meets T 3:00PM-6:00PM GWB 2.116D
(also listed as WGS 393)
AFR 372C • Race/Gender/Surveillance
30465 • Fall 2017
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CLA 0.102
CDE
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
UGS 302 • Surveillance: An Introduction
62245 • Fall 2017
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM CLA 0.106
Wr
ID
AFR 372C • Race/Gender/Surveillance
30150 • Fall 2016
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CLA 0.102
CDE
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
UGS 302 • Surveillance: An Introduction
62140 • Fall 2016
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM GWB 1.130
Wr
ID
AFR 322D • Race And The Digital
29340 • Spring 2016
Meets MWF 1:00PM-2:00PM CLA 1.404
GCWr
(also listed as WGS 322)
AFR 381 • Race And The Body
29600 • Spring 2016
Meets W 2:30PM-5:30PM GWB 1.130
(also listed as MAS 392, SOC 395L, WGS 393)
AFR 372C • Race/Gender/Surveillance
29625 • Fall 2015
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CLA 0.102
CDE
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
UGS 302 • Surveillance: An Introduction
61405 • Fall 2015
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM GWB 1.130
Wr
ID
AFR 322D • Race And The Digital
29680 • Spring 2015
Meets MWF 1:00PM-2:00PM CLA 1.404
GCWr
(also listed as SOC 322D, WGS 322)
AFR 376 • Senior Seminar
29844 • Spring 2015
Meets MW 3:30PM-5:00PM GWB 1.130
Wr
AFR 372C • Race/Gender/Surveillance
30515 • Fall 2014
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CLA 0.102
CDE
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
AFR 381 • Race And The Body
30645 • Fall 2014
Meets T 12:00PM-3:00PM JES A230
(also listed as SOC 395L, WGS 393)
AFR 372C • Race, Gender, And Surveillance
30645 • Spring 2014
Meets MWF 10:00AM-11:00AM CLA 0.130
CD
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration
30780 • Spring 2014
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM CLA 0.118
GCWr
(also listed as SOC 321K, WGS 322)
AFR 372C • Race, Gender, And Surveillance
30347 • Fall 2013
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CLA 0.102
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
AFR 381 • Race And The Body
30525 • Fall 2013
Meets TH 12:00PM-3:00PM CLA 3.106
(also listed as SOC 395L, WGS 393)
AFR 372C • Race, Gender, And Surveillance
30307 • Spring 2013
Meets MWF 10:00AM-11:00AM CLA 0.102
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration
30410 • Spring 2013
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM CLA 0.120
Wr
(also listed as SOC 321K, WGS 322)
AFR 372C • Race, Gender, And Surveillance
30270 • Fall 2012
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM BUR 130
(also listed as SOC 322V, WGS 322)
AFR 381 • Race And The Body
30425 • Fall 2012
Meets TH 12:00PM-3:00PM BUR 214
(also listed as SOC 395L, WGS 393)
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration
30497 • Spring 2012
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM BUR 231
Wr
(also listed as SOC 321K, WGS 322)
AFR 374D • The Wire: Inequality/City Life
30264 • Fall 2011
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM BUR 214
Wr
(also listed as SOC 321K)
SOC 395L • Race And The Body
45635 • Fall 2011
Meets TH 12:00PM-3:00PM BUR 214
(also listed as WGS 393)
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration
30555 • Spring 2011
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM BUR 231
Wr
(also listed as SOC 321K, WGS 322)
AFR 374E • Surveillance & Social Control
30561 • Spring 2011
Meets MWF 10:00AM-11:00AM BUR 136
(also listed as WGS 322)
AFR 374E • Surveillance & Social Control
35380 • Fall 2010
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM UTC 4.124
(also listed as SOC 321K, WGS 322)
WGS 393 • Race And The Body
47305 • Fall 2010
Meets TH 12:00PM-3:00PM JES A230
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration-W
35800 • Fall 2009
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM BUR 231
C2
(also listed as WGS 322)
AFR 374E • Surveillance & Social Control
35805 • Fall 2009
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM BUR 130
(also listed as WGS 322)
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration-W
35030 • Spring 2009
Meets MWF 9:00AM-10:00AM PMA 6.116
C2
(also listed as WGS 322)
WGS 393 • Race And The Body
48135 • Spring 2009
Meets M 12:00PM-3:00PM BUR 214
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration-W
36025 • Fall 2008
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM BUR 231
C2
(also listed as WGS 322)
WGS 322 • Surveillance & Social Control
48715 • Fall 2008
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM BUR 130
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration-W
35839 • Spring 2008
Meets MWF 9:00AM-10:00AM BUR 216
C2
AFR 374E • Race, Culture, And Migration
36527 • Fall 2007
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM WAG 420
Select Publications
- Books
- Peer-Reviewed Articles
- Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
- Peer-Reviewed Journal Special Issue
- Peer-Reviewed Journal Special Issue in Progress
Books
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
Simone Browne
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
Duke University Press (2015)
You can read the Introduction to Dark Matters here
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Browne, S. "Everybody’s Got a Little Light Under the Sun: Black Luminosity and the Visual Culture of Surveillance." Cultural Studies 26(4), 2012: 542-564.
Browne, S. “Digital Epidermalization: Race, Identity and Biometrics." Critical Sociology 36(1), 2010: 131-150.
Browne, S. “Getting Carded: Border Control and the Politics of Canada’s Permanent Resident Card." Citizenship Studies 9(4), 2005: 423-438.
Browne, S. “Of ‘Passport Babies’ and ‘Border Control’: The Case of Mavis Baker v. Minister ofCitizenship and Immigration." Atlantis 26(2), 2002: 97-108.
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
French, M. and S. Browne. “Surveillance as Social Regulation: Profiles and Profiling Technology." Criminalization, Representation, Regulation: Thinking Differently About Crime. Eds. Deborah Brock, Amanda Glasbeek, and Carmela Murdocca. University of Toronto Press, 2014: 251-284.
Browne, S. “Race and Surveillance." Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies. Eds. Kirstie Ball, Kevin D. Haggerty, and David Lyon. Routledge, 2012: 72-79.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Special Issue
The Obamas and the New Politics of Race. Special Issue, Qualitative Sociology 35(2), Eds. Simone Browne and Ben Carrington, 2012.
Download "Introduction" here.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Special Issue in Progress
Race and Surveillance. Special Issue, Surveillance & Society, Eds. Simone Browne, Katherine McKittrick and Ronak K. Kapadia.
Upcoming Talks + Past Presentations
Program in Racism, Immigration and Citizenship
April 12, 2017, John Hopkins University
Ordinary Media Research Workshop
April 5, 2017, Northwestern University
Monday Seminar, Department of Anthropology
April 3, 2017, University of Chicago
Informatic of Domination Speaker Series
March 23, 2017, Goldsmiths, University of London
Biopunk: Subverting Biopolitics
The CISSC Risk Research Working Group
February 2, 2017, Concordia University
Department of Art, History, and Communication Studies
January 27, 2017, McGill University
The Emerging Means of Production: Anticipating the Next Digital Divide
November 15, 2016, Ford Foundation
Decolonial Computing: Histories and Futures Conference
November 4, 2016, New York University
Mozilla Festival
October 28, 2016, London [video]
Black Feminist Vision: A Symposium on Possibility and Practice
October 20, 2016, University of California, Los Angeles
Four Women and One Robot
October 14, 2016, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Reimagining Everything: Women of Color Feminisms, Art, Culture & The Humanities Symposium
September 16, 2016 University of Maryland
NOI♀SE Summer School on Feminist Media Studies of Migration
September 1, 2016, Utrecht University in the Netherlands
BIOSurveillance Research Colloquium
May 27, 2016, University of California, Santa Cruz
MediaLive 2016: Corruption
May 17, 2016, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
The Color of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of the Black Community
April 8, 2016, Georgetown Law School
Dark Matters - Author Meets Critics at the AAG
March 31, 2016, San Francisco, CA
Red Emma's Bookstore
Department of American Studies and Ethnicity
February 28, 2016, University of Southern Califonia
Digital Studies Workshop
February 11, 2016, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Open Score: Art and Technology 2016
January 30, 2016, The New Museum
Department of African American Studies
January 28, 2016, Yale University
Department of Film and Media Studies
November 19, 2015, University of California, Santa Barbara
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and Other Stories: A Conversation on Infrastructure, Intersectionality and Ideas (with Ingrid Burrington and Allison Burtch)
November 5, 2015, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Data, Democracy and the Human Story: A Conversation with Members of Deep Lab (with Ingrid Burrington and Allison Burtch)
November 5, 2015, Loyola University
Department of Information Studies
October 29, 2015, University of California, Los Angeles
Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association
October 10, 2015, Toronto Canada
States of Surveillance: New Directions and Empirical Projects Symposium
October 1-2, 2015, University of Kansas
America and it's "Unfit": Eugenics Then and Now Conference
September 25-26, 2015, New York University
Black. Life. Forms
May 14, 2015. University of California-Davis
‘Smile! You are being recorded’: CCTV and Other Tools of Surveillance
April 3, 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Black. Life. Forms.
April 10, 2015, University of Pennsylvania
Surveillance, Style and Subversion: DIY and Other Responses to Biometric Data Collection
October 3, 2014, University of Michigan
Race and Surveillance: From Slavery to the Age of 'Big Data'
October 15, 2014, Department of Sociology, Princeton University
When Blackness Enters the Frame: Surveillance, Biometric Technology and Subversion
October 16, 2014, Center for African American Studies, Princeton University
When Blackness Enters the Frame
November 16, 2014, This Isn’t About the Future: Black Digital Culture Now Conference. California Institute of the Arts
Dark Sousveillance: Surveillance, Race and Resistance
December 9, 2013, CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative Speaker Series. New York City
Videos
The Color of Surveillance 2016. Georgetown Law
Open Score: Art + Technology 2016. New Museum
Art in the Overseen World
The Lens in the Mirror: How Surveillance is Pictured in the Media and Public Culture
A Joint Open Society-BagNews Salon
Surveillant Anxiety
Surveillant Anxiety
NEW INC: What are the lived effects of surveillance? A panel moderated by Kate Crawford, with Simone Browne, Jade E. Davis, Biella Coleman, and Karen Levy.
Dark Sousveillance Race, Surveillance and Resistance
Dark Sousveillance Race, Surveillance and Resistance
Graduate Center, CUNY by the Digital Praxis Seminar and the CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative
Media Appearances + Interviews
Haaretz (link) (June 28 2016)
Tracking Blackness: Q&A with Dark Matters Author Simone Browne (link) The Public Eye magazine (June 2016)
"What We're Reading" New York Times (link) (June 10, 2016)
"New York City has been shining surveillance lights on its black population for the last 300 years" (link) Fusion (May 2016)
Imagine Otherwise. Episode 009 (link) (May 2016)
"The Surveillance of Blackness: From the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Contemporary Surveillance Technologies" (link) truthout (February 2016)
"‘The Lulz Continue’: The New Museum and Rhizome Co-Host the First Open Score Conference on Art and Technology" (link) Art News (February 2016)
"5 Questions: Dr. Simone Browne, Associate Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies" (link) (January 2016)
"Abuse of data comes as no surprise. A conversation with cyberfeminist research collective Deep Lab" (link). Impose Magazine (July 2015)
"Exploring feminist hacktivism with Deep Lab" (link). i-D Magazine (July 2015)
Service
The University of Texas at Austin (select)
University
Chair, Recruitment and Retention Sub-Committee, Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity, 2015-2016
Member, Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity, 2015-2016
Departmental Representative, Institutional Research Board, 2015-present
Faculty Panel Member, Bridging Disciplines Program (Cultural Studies section), 2011-present
Member, Faculty Council (elected), 2013-2015, 2009-2011
Chair (elected), Recruitment and Retention Committee, Standing Committee of the General Faculty, 2014-2015
Co-Chair (elected), Recruitment and Retention Committee, Standing Committee of the General Faculty, 2013-2014
Faculty Advisor, Texas Feminists (undergraduate student organization), 2011-2014
Department of African and African Diaspora Studies
Chair, Graduate Admissions Committee 2016-present
Graduate Admissions Committee 2015-present
Executive Committee (elected), 2014-2015
Executive Committee 2017-present
Department of Sociology
Executive Committee (elected), 2012-2013
Graduate Admissions Committee (elected), 2011-2012
Center for Women’s and Gender Studies
Chair, Graduate Admissions Committee, 2015-2016
Chair, Graduate Admissions Committee, 2014-2015
Member, Graduate Admissions Committee, 2011-2012
Warfield Center for African and African American Studies
Executive Committee (elected), 2009-2011
Professional (select)
Executive Board Member. Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), 2014-present
Initial Judge. HASTAC Digital Media and Learning Competition, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015
Steering Committee. HASTAC, 2008-2014
Curriculum Vitae
Profile Pages
- Home
- Courses
- Select Publications
- Upcoming Talks + Past Presentations
- Videos
- Media Appearances + Interviews
- Service