Simone Browne

Associate Professor of Black Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Simone Browne is Associate Professor of Black Studies and Research Director of Critical Surveillance Inquiry with Good Systems, at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently writing her second book manuscript, “Like the Mixture of Charcoal and Darkness,” which examines the interventions made by artists whose works grapple with the surveillance of Black life, from policing, privacy, smart dust and the FBI’s COINTELPRO to encryption, electronic waste and artificial intelligence. Together, these essays explore the productive possibilities of creative innovation when it comes to troubling surveillance and its various tactics, and imagining Black life beyond the surveillance state. Simone is the author of “Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.”