Explore the rapid evolution of our contemporary environment of hypervigilance and the consequences for those targeted by predictive surveillance. Chaired by Andrew Hoskins, this online launch of the Journal of Digital War is presented by Heba Y. Amin, Anthony Downey, Shona Illingworth and William Merrin and brings together key thinkers from art, visual culture, media studies and sociology.

Digital War refers to how digital technologies and media are transforming how wars are fought, lived, represented, known, and remembered. The new Journal of Digital War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) edited by Andrew Hoskins and William Merrin, identifies not so much a new form of war, but an entire, emergent research field. The Journal of Digital War sets out to be a dynamic forum to address cutting-edge developments, rapid response methods to new wars, and asserts that digital war is now mainstream.

Read the new article Contesting post-digital futures: drone warfare and the geo-politics of aerial surveillance in the middle east by Heba Y. Amin & Anthony Downey (Journal of Digital War, Issue I, 2020). Download here.

Andrew Hoskins is Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His research sits at the intersection of memory, war and media. He is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Memory Studies, Co-Editor of the Routledge book series Media, War & Security, and, with William Merrin,  founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Digital War. His latest work (with Matthew Ford) is Radical War: Data, Attention & Control in the 21^st Century (forthcoming 2021).

Shona Illingworth is an artist filmmaker and Reader in Arts at the University of Kent, whose work combines interdisciplinary research collaborations with socially engaged practice.  Her current work examines the impact of accelerating geopolitical, technological and environmental change on the composition, nature and use of airspace and the implications for human rights. Illingworth is an Imperial War Museum Associate and on the editorial board of the Journal of Digital War.

William Merrin is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies in the department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University. His research and teaching focus on media and cultural theory, contemporary developments in digital media and the history and archaeology of digital culture and technologies. With Andrew Hoskins, Merrin is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Digital War.

Heba Y. Amin is a multi-media artist from Egypt. She works with political themes and archival history, using mediums including film, photography, archival material, lecture performance and installation. Amin teaches at Bard College Berlin, is a doctorate fellow in art history at Freie Universität, and a current Field of Vision fellow in New York. She is the co-founder of the Black Athena Collective, curator of visual art for the MIZNA journal, and co-curator for the biennial residency program DEFAULT with Ramdom Association.

Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University). He is currently a Co-investigator on AHRC and GCRF–funded research projects that focus on cultural practices, education, and digital methodologies in Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text and Digital War, respectively, and is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press, 2019–ongoing).

This event is part of the public programme for the exhibition Heba Y. Amin – When I see the future, I close my eyes.

Image 1: Blueprint #6 (extract), 2020. Courtesy of Shona Illingworth in discussion with Andrew Hoskins and Renata Salecl.

Image 2: Blueprint #5, 2018. Courtesy of Shona Illingworth in discussion with Andrew Hoskins.