Editorial: Doing Surveillance Studies. *

Those of us involved in the burgeoning field of surveillance studies have had a great deal to say of late. The proliferation and intensification of surveillance practices within and between societies has prompted rich empirical and theoretical inquiry, stimulated lively debate, and generated vital insight into contemporary spatial and temporal dynamics of governance, risk, trust, identity and privacy. Almost no attention, however, has been directed at the practicalities and pragmatics of our project. What does it mean to ‘do’ surveillance studies? What aims assumptions, ambitions, ironies and institutional environments characterize this sub field? The unique contributions we can make are contingent upon how we navigate the familiar pragmatics of social science, whilst delineating novel territory and modes of investigation, while avoiding the conflation of the former with the latter. To put it another way, is there anything that could be said about ‘doing surveillance studies’ that is not immediately applicable to ‘doing social science?’ We believe that reflections upon the act of doing surveillance studies can indeed provide novel insights into longstanding questions about the social sciences: epistemology; transdisciplinarity; institutional pressures on academic careers; the consequences and impact of research; and the practicalities of knowledge generation are just a few examples. This issue of