Activists and the Surveillance State - Book Launch
Event Information
Description
The Westminster Law, Development and Conflict Research Group invites you to the launch of Activists and the Surveillance State - Learning From Repression, Aziz Choudry (editor) (Pluto Press, 2019).
When: Monday 11 March 2019 6 - 8 PM
Where: Room RS UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2HW London
This book reflects on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration that pervades the lives of activists, organisations that are labelled as 'threats to national security' or ‘domestic extremists’. Activists and scholars from the UK, South Africa, Canada, the US, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand discuss the long history of the use of secret police, security agencies and informers to spy on and undermine opposition to dominant political and economic order and show how movements can learn from their own repression, developing a critical understanding of the nature of states, capital and democracy today that can inform the struggles of tomorrow.
The speakers are contributors to the book.
Nafeez Ahmed, an award-winning investigative journalist, best-selling author and international security scholar. He is currently editor-in-chief of INSURGE intelligence, a crowdfunded investigative journalism project.
Emily Apple, writer and activist. She is an editor and writer at The Canary and is a core participant in the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
Aziz Choudry, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Social Movement Learning and Knowledge Production in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University. He is an activist and author of several books on learning from activism and knowledge production within social movements.
Radha D’Souza teaches law at the University of Westminster and works with a number of social movements in the UK and India including Campaign Against Criminalising Communities.
Sam Raphael: Chair and moderator. Sam Raphael teaches International Relations and Geopolitics at the University of Westminster. He runs The Rendition Project funded by the ESRC and works with NGOs and human rights investigators to uncover and understand human rights violations in the “War on Terror”.
For more information please contact Angelica De Freitas e Silva at defreia@westminster.ac.uk.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Organiser Westminster Law, Development and Conflicts Research Group
Organiser of Activists and the Surveillance State - Book Launch
The WLCD research group aims to bring researchers from diverse critical traditions including Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), Marxist, Critical Legal Theory (CLS) in Legal Studies, Critical, Marxist, post-Marxist, Structural, post-Structural and heterodox approaches to Development Studies and critical Conflict Studies to explore the linkages and connections between law, development and conflicts in the Third World. Since the end of the Cold War, and more recently since the events of the so-called “9/11”, international law, international institutions, development policies and civil and military conflicts in the Third World appear tangled and interconnected in complex ways. The Westminster Law, Development & Conflict Research Group seeks to probe the entanglement through interdisciplinary scholarship and multidisciplinary perspectives. The LDC Group provides a forum for (1) conversation, collaboration, and cooperation between scholars, activists and wider communities; (2) to develop research activities to advance understanding and appreciation of the complex interplay of law, development policies and conflicts; and (3) to extend the outreach of Westminster LDC Group’s work to the wider research communities, development NGOs and global justice movements. Affiliation to the Group is open to scholars, legal professionals, NGOs, activists and community organisations.
