On ‘Critical’ Scholarship in Intelligence and Surveillance Studies

The term ‘Critical’ is seemingly ubiquitous in the academic research in international relations and related fields. In this episode of CIPS POD, host Srdjan Vucetic and guests, David Murakami Wood Hager and Ben Jaffel discuss what ‘critical’ means to them in the context of intelligence studies. Srdjan Vucetic teaches at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA-ÉSAPI), University of Ottawa. Research interests in international politics, foreign & defence policy, and the Yugoslav region. Co-Coordonnateur du Réseau en théorie internationale du Centre d’études en politiques internationales (CÉPI-CIPS). David Murakami Wood is the Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, and most importantly the Incoming Professor of Critical Surveillance and Security Studies in the Dept of Criminology at uOttawa. He’s also Co-editor-in-Chief at the international, interdisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal of Surveillance & Society. Hager Ben Jaffel is the CIPS Research Associate for 2021-2022. She holds a PhD in International Relations from King’s College London and specializes in the sociology of intelligence with a focus on police forces and Europe. Her first monograph Anglo-European Intelligence Cooperation: Britain in Europe, Europe in Britain (Routledge, 2019) explores Britain’s intelligence relations with Europe, by investigating the lived experiences of police personnel involved in counter-terrorism in European countries and EU internal security agencies.