• Students
• Staff
• Alumni

• Default theme
• Dyslexia theme
• High Contrast theme

Home > Social Sciences > Sociology > Sociology Programmes > Postgraduate > Surveillance Studies

MA in Surveillance Studies

An overview of the MA Surveillance Studies programme:

Surveillance has in recent times become a central concept in sociological understandings of contemporary social relations and organisational processes. Its operational reach, pervasiveness and effects surpass conventional psychological, spatial, temporal, social, cultural, economic and political divides, particularly in a world of increasing global interdependence.

Fundamentally, surveillance involves the real time monitoring of space-time and the extraction, storage and processing of the information accumulated so that future action can be empirically comprehended, rationally administered or strategically pre-empted.

Using a range of increasingly sophisiticated technological methods and apparatuses, human surveillance systems seek to make particular populations visible through the acquisition of  information and, in turn, impose particular classificatory schemata upon that which is encountered.

Indeed, whether we are aware of it or not, personal information is being routinely collected from us, through attributed identity and reference numbers, camera images, DNA samples, mobile phone communications, web searches, credit card transactions, loyalty cards, fingerprints and retinal scans etc., and it is the social, cultural, political and economic means through which this process occurs, the theoretical reasons behind such measures and the social implications, which are the principal focuses of surveillance studies.

Surveillance studies is a rapidly expanding research field which investigates the wide-ranging role of surveillance in social, cultural, economic and governmental processes. The MA, the first of its kind in the world, builds on the research strengths of the sociology department and is delivered by leading experts in a range of areas. The distinctive interdisciplinary programme taught is tailored to provide students with the knowledge and analytical skills to develop an in-depth understanding of substantive debates, methodological approaches and surveillance policies and practices in a variety of cultural and strategic domains. It is ideally suited for students who wish to engage with cutting edge theoretical developments in the social sciences, critical research issues and key trends in governance and justice.

The programme critically explores and analyses:

• The origins and growth of surveillance and its raison d’être
• The political economy of surveillance and its cultural context
• Surveillance sites, technologies and techniques
• Theories of surveillance
• Surveillance operation, experience and resistance
• Surevillance policy, regulation and ethics
• Surveillance futures

Students taking this degree will have a variety of career aspirations and may use their research as a vehicle for advancement in academia or in a particular policy or professional domain (e.g. criminal justice, data protection, information technology, commerce, government, policing etc.).  Professionals already employed in the industry will find the knowledge accrued invaluable for better understanding of operational and managerial issues. 

Programme Director: Dr Gavin Smith

Fees for 2010/11

Please click here for further information on How to Apply, the Modules you will study and the Structure of the programme. Find more information about City University London and You.

To download a programme brochure click here.

Alternatively, for further details please contact the programme administrator:

Mr Kieran Brookes

Telephone: 020 7040 8908

E-mail: Kieran.Brookes.1@city.ac.uk  
 

 Register here for an open evening  

Back to top