91ÑÇÉ«

November 17, 2026

2:30 PM to 4:00 PM

Location: S701 Ross (in person event), Keele campus, 91ÑÇÉ«

Guest speaker: Özgün Erdener Topak, Associate Professor, Department of Social Science at 91ÑÇÉ«

Drones have rapidly emerged as central components of expanding digital border surveillance apparatuses. This talk demonstrates how European drones produce necro-racial effects across Mediterranean borderzones, particularly for migrants trapped in Libya. Operating through remote, vertical surveillance and data-sharing mechanisms, European border drones facilitate pull-backs to Libyan torture spaces where migrants are subjected to crimes against humanity. The talk examines how the drone gaze reproduces a racialized way of seeing, denying migrants their complex subjectivities and human rights while reducing them to anonymous, heat-emitting threat profiles. Furthermore, the talk critiques mainstream debates surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and autonomous border drones. Moving beyond the twin traps of techno-utopian solutionism and techno-dystopic ‘killer robot’ imaginaries, it argues that the violent outcomes of a dystopian future are already present for racialized populations, without the need for drones to achieve full autonomy. Finally, the talk highlights how migrants exercise dark sousveillance to evade drone surveillance, reclaiming their subjectivity and human rights.

Bio: Ã–zgün Erdener Topak is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science at 91ÑÇÉ«, Canada, where he is primarily affiliated with the Criminology undergraduate program and Socio-Legal Studies graduate program, as well as a Resident Scholar at the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS). As an interdisciplinary social scientist, Dr. Topak's research focuses on surveillance, migration, state violence and repression (including authoritarianism and genocide), human rights, and critical criminology. His current research centers on two primary themes: 1) surveillance, forced migration, borders, and violence; and 2) authoritarian and genocidal surveillance. His work is situated within the Global South and East, with a particular empirical focus on the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He co-edited the volumes New Authoritarian Practices in the Middle East and North Africa (2022, Edinburgh University Press) and Surveillance and the Dossier (2026, University of Toronto Press), and his recent work has appeared in journals including International Political Sociology, the Journal of Genocide Research, the Journal of Borderlands Studies, and Surveillance & Society.

Co-sponsored with Socio-Legal Studies, 91ÑÇÉ«