Azadeh Akbari

• Member of the organising committee, the 10th biennial Surveillance & Society conference of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN), Ljubljana University, Faculty of Law, May 28-31 2024.
• Member of the organising committee, the 1st Workshop for German Research Network Emancipatory Technology: The relationship between technology and emancipation, Osnabrück, 2-3 March 2023. [funded by German Research Foundation, DFG]
• Member of the organising committee, concept developer, and panels’ host, International Convention on Digitally-Mediated Assemblies with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, European Center for Not-for-Profit Law Stichting, 27.02.2023
• Member of the organising committee, the 9th biennial Surveillance & Society conference of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN), Erasmus University Rotterdam, June 1-3 2022, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
• Organiser of Surveillance in the Global South Researchers’ Workshop, in cooperation with Chenai Chair, Special Advisor for Africa Innovation at Mozilla, Midori Ogasawara, Assistant Professor in Sociology, University of Victoria, Ozgun Topak, Assistant Professor in Social Sciences, York University, Keren Weitzberg, Lecturer in History, University College London (UCL), hosted online by Münster University, August 2021

Invited Talks and Panel Chairing:

• Panel Organiser & member: Surveillance embedded in telecommunication and internet infrastructures: how to make infrastructural surveillance visible? RightsCon 2023 Costa Rica (online), 08.06.2023. [with Crofton Black, Lighthouse Reports]
• Invited contributor: at the workshop Understanding and Combating Online Manipulation: Setting an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda, Digital Life Initiative: Cornell Tech, New York, May 11.-12.05.2023.
• Invited contributor: Political Economy of Data: A Global South Perspective, at the workshop Decolonized Narratives in Political Economy: Alternative Perspectives from the Global South, Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study and University of Hamburg, 28.-29.03.2023.
• Invited panellist at the panel Circulations of STS research(ers) and good academic research practice and working conditions, STS-hub.de 2023 conference, the Human Technology Center, Aachen, 15.03.2023.
• Invited panellist to the Masterclass on Geo Ethics: Ethical issues underlining research with geospatial data, ITC, University of Twente, 08.03.2023.
• Invited contributor to the workshop Urban Digital Infrastructures and Privilege, Design Lab, University of Twente, 08.12.2022.
• Digital Sovereignty: The Influence of Chinese Digital Governance Discourse on Iran, Invited lecture, Political geography in the age of digital media workshop, University of Freiburg, 23/-24/9/2022.
• Bodies that Betray: Biometric Data & EU’s Corporeal Borders, Invited lecture, Hidden layers: AI and Design summer school, Köln International School of Design, 22/07/2022.
• Die verratenden Körper: EU Grenzkontrolle durch biometrische Datensammlung, Invited lecture, Humangeographisches Kolloquium, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 29/06/2022.
• Opening the Black Box of EU’s Migration Data Banks. Invited panellist at the conference ‘Border Regimes in the Age of Technoscience,’ International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tübingen, 23/-24/06/2022.
• Surveillance Studies & the Global South, Panel chair, the 9th biennial Surveillance & Society conference of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN), Erasmus University Rotterdam, 02/06/2022.
• Invited panellist at the workshop ‘Between controversy and struggle: methodological interventions,’ Amsterdam Centre on European Studies (ACES), 31/05/2022
• Feminist and Queer Approaches to Technological Resistance in the Global South, Panel chair, IFIP 9.4 conference (the Working Group 9.4 of the International Federation for Information Processing), virtual, 26/05/2022
• Opening the Black Box of EU’s Migration Data Banks. Invited panellist for the concluding round table “Futures of Intelligence Oversight”, Intelligence, surveillance, and oversight: tracing connections and contestations Conference, King’s College London, 27.01.2022.
• Contestation over Data from the Global South: An Activist-Academic Perspective. Guest lecture at Southern Critical Data Studies ECR Network, University of Oxford, School of Geography and the Environment, St John’s College, 15.09.2021.
• Digitale Technologien und die Festigung der autoritären Herrschaft: Ein iranisches Fallbeispiel, Lecture for the German PhD Prize 2021 (nominated in social science category), Körber Stiftung, Berlin, 29.06.2021
• Surveillance as Spatial Injustice, Invited lecture for the VUB Research Chair in Surveillance Studies’ Seminars, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium, 17.06.2021.
• Self-harm as resistance against biometric data gathering in the EU’s migration system, Digital Identity During Times of Crisis’ Workshop, Turing Institute, London, 24.05.2021.
• ‘Authoritarian Surveillance: A Corona Test’, The Digital State. Technology and Government in Pandemic Times, the Centre for Digital Culture, the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London, GB, 14.05.2021.
• Autoritärer Wandel: Wird die Corona-Krise die Überwachungspolitik ändern? Das humangeographische Kolloquium, Universität Jena, 30.06.2020.
• Invited panellist for the Panel: Anonymity, Privacy, Transparency, Surveillance. Conference & Exhibition: A = Anonym, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 25.10.2018.

Conference Presentations

• The politics of justice in the “Data Justice” discourse. Data Justice 2023 Conference, Cardiff, UK, 19-20.06.2023.
• Authoritarian Smart Cities: Platforms, Governance and Total Urban Surveillance, Online, PlatGov Conference, 04.04.2023. (with Prof Dr David Murakami Wood, University of Ottawa)
• Authoritarian Smart City: A Research Agenda, Association of American Geographers (AAG) 2023 confernce, Denver & online, 23.03.2023.
• Smart Authoritarian City: A Spatial|Data Justice Approach, Netherlands Institute of Governance (NIG) Conference, Tilburg University, 13.10.2022.
• Automation of urban policing: Spatial|Data Justice and women’s resistance against compulsory Hijab in Iran, Beyond Smart Cities, Malmö University, 17.06.2022.
• The Code-Body at the EU’s Digital Corporeal Borders, the 9th biennial Surveillance & Society conference of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN), Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3.06.2022.
• Biometric Data Banks and EU’s Corporeal Borders. American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (virtual), New York, 26.02.2022.
• Substitutional Educational Platforms in the ECO Countries during COVID-19 Pandemic. II Digital Geographies Conference (Virtual): Critical perspectives on the platform economy, Online, 28.10.2021.
• Die verratenden Körper: EU Grenzkontrolle durch biometrische Datensammlung. Deutscher Kongress für Geographie, Online, 08.10.2021.
• Digitale Schulplattformen in den ECO-Ländern während der COVID-19-Pandemie: Widerstandsfähigkeit und ICT4D. Deutscher Kongress für Geographie, Online, 08.10.2021.
• Datafied Code-Body, Borders and EU’s migration system. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2021, Royal Geographical Society, London (online), 02.09.2021.
• Epistemic Consequences of Following Data from the Global South. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2021, Royal Geographical Society, London (online), 01.09.2021.
• Epistemic Consequences of Following Data from the Global South. 5th Digital Geographies Research Group Annual Symposium: Where next for Digital Geographies? Pathways and prospects, Online, 14.07.2021.
• A Resilient ICT4D Approach to ECO Countries’ Education Response during COVID-19 Pandemic. IFIP 9.4 Virtual Conference 2021: Resilient ICT4D, IFIP’s Working Group on the Implications of Information and Digital Technologies for Development 26.05.2021.
• Bodies that Betray: EU’s Corporeal Borders. TILTing Perspectives 2021: Regulating in Times of Crisis, Tilburg University, Online, 21.05.2021.
• Bodies that Betray: EU’s Corporeal Borders. Geomedia 2021: Off the Grid, Universität Siegen, Online, 07.05.2021.
• Global Crisis, Local Platform: A Qualitative Analysis of Iran’s Online Educational Platform. First Annual Conference of the Platform Governance Research Network, Online, 24.3.2021.
• Cyber-Surveillance as Spatial Injustice: The Case Study of Iran. Neue Kulturgeographie: Technocultures und Technoscapes, Bonn, Germany, 31.01.2020.
• Intelligent Filtering as Spatial|Data Injustice: The Case of Iran. IFIP Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management, Brugg/Windisch, Switzerland, 20.08.2019.
• Spatial|Data Justice: Mapping and Digitised Strolling Against Moral Police in Iran. “Urban Data, Inequality and Justice in the Global South” International Workshop, Manchester, GB, 14.06.2019.
• Contentious spaces: Resistance assemblages against moral police surveillance in Iran. 8th International Conference of Critical Geography, Athens, Greece, 21.04.2019.
• Follow the Thing: Data. VII. Interdisziplinärer Workshop: Privacy, Datenschutz & Surveillance, Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany, 11.12.2018.
• Travelogue of Surveillance Technologies: Touring Iranian Users’ Data with no Visa. Surveillance Studies Network – 8th Biennial Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, 08.06.2018.
• Presenting the PhD Project, IRS Spring Academy 2018, “Investigating Space(s): Current Theoretical and Methodological Approaches: Virtuality and Socio-Materiality”, Leibniz-Institut für Raumbezogene Sozialforschung, 25.05.2018, Erkner, Germany.
• Political Spirituality and the Subject of Resistance. Neue Kulturgeographie: Materie, Materialien, Methoden, Freiburg, Germany, 27.01.2018.
• A Critical Study of Space: The Case of Iran’s Surveillance of Public and Digital Spaces. Geomedia 2017: Spaces of the In-Between, Karlstad, Sweden, 10.05.2017.
• Presenting the PhD Project, PhD students’ colloquium with Prof. Dr. Derek Gregory (British Columbia University), Heidelberg, Germany, 26.4.2017.
• Public harassment in Tehran: Gender performativity, shame, respectability and honour. INSEP2015 Conference: Violence, Representations and Sexuality, Ghent, Belgium, 14.07.2015.