Sophia Goodfriend
The ethics and impact of new surveillance technologiesI am a PhD candidate at Duke University’s Department of Cultural Anthropology and Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellow. Currently based in Jerusalem, my academic work examines the ethics and impact of new surveillance technologies.
Alongside my academic work, I work as an independent researcher with civil society organizations in the region and as a freelance journalist. My writing on warfare, automation, and digital rights has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Baffler, +972 Magazine, The Boston Review, among other outlets. Before begining my PhD, I recieved a Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a BA in American Studies (summa cum laude) from Tufts University. My inbox is open for commissions.
The ability of governments and companies to surveil everyday life has never been greater. Digital surveillance, biometric monitoring, and smartphone tracking enable the state and corporations to mine personal data, often at the cost of fundamental civil liberties. My dissertation asks what drives the expansion of surveillance as such, and examines how these technologies impact everyday life across diverse communities in Israel/Palestine.
My multi-sited ethnographic research takes place among digital rights activists and communities subjected to intensive tracking as well as engineers, entrepreneurs, and policy-makers developing and implementing biometric and digital surveillance. As a cultural anthropologist, I ask how technological systems affect lived experience. I strive to understand what makes people, and the institutions they compose, invest in or contest these technologies.
My research has practical and theoretical implications. Ethnographically, I am concerned with the kind of humanity at stake in new surveillance regimes. Practically, my research aims to help policymakers implement biometric and digital monitoring ethically, without eroding essential civil and political rights.
A Street View of Occupation:
Getting Around Hebron on Google Maps
Visual Anthropology Review, Fall 2021Read
Forthcoming Spring 2022
Drone Warfare's Redemptive Refrains
Drone Aesthetics: War, Culture, EcologyLondon: Open Humanities Press
Israel’s Far Right Could Escalate Drone Warfare Against Palestinians
Foreign PolicyRead
Point. Click. Occupy.
The BafflerRead
How the Occupation Fuels Tel Aviv’s Booming AI Sector
Foreign PolicyRead
Cyberespionage with Benefits
Boston ReviewRead
When Palestinian Political Speech Is “Incitement”
Jewish CurrentsRead
Featured
Online Webinar, March 2022
Under surveillance
MozillaFestOnline Webinar, December 2021
Whose watching: Surveillance in Jerusalem and the west Bank
Ir Amim-City of NationsOnline Webinar, November 2021
Welcome to the panopticon
The Institute for Middle East PeaceWashington D.C. (moved online), October 2020
Google Ayosh
Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual MeetingPrague, CZ (moved online), August 2020
Big Data’s Shadow Archive
Society for Social Studies of Science Annual MeetingSheffield, UK, February 2021
BioPower’s Promise
The Aesthetics of Drone Warfare,An International Research Conference at the University of Sheffield
New Orleans, USA November 2019
A Street View of Hebron
Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual MeetingBerlin, Germany August 2019
Everyday Affects of Surveillance
3rd <Interrupted=cyfem and queer> a convergence curated by the Creamcake CollectiveChicago, IL, May 2017
Affective Interruptions on Birthright Israel
Master’s Program in Social Sciences Graduate Student Research ConferenceMilwaukee, WI, May 2017
Anxious Itineraries
The Big No-A Center for 21st Century Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Medford, MA October 2015
Jewish American Identity/Politics
Tufts University American Studies Shapiro Award ReceptionMedford, MA, August 2014