The Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society 2025 Transit Talks Welcomes Author and Professor Simone Browne, PhD
草榴社区, Pa. 鈥� 草榴社区鈥檚 Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society (WFI) hosts the 2025 Transit Talk, a marquee collaborative lecture series with Temple University鈥檚 Lew Klein College of Media and Communications and The University of Pennsylvania鈥檚 Annenberg School of Communication, on Thursday, April 24 featuring Simone Browne, PhD, associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and director of the Center for Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Browne will present, 鈥淥n Doorbells, MTurks and Algorithmic Landscapes,鈥� using doorbell cameras, the apps that accompany home monitoring systems and recent porch piracy laws as an entry into a larger discussion about the impact prison data collection technologies have on consolidating state, policing and corporate powers. Dr. Browne will also examine visual artist Danielle Dean鈥檚 installation Amazon (2022) and her creative interrogation of the human labor that underwrites artificial intelligence by way of Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing marketplace allowing businesses to outsource talks to a global workforce.
Dr. Browne is an author and scholar exploring the intersections of surveillance, Black life and technology. She is currently working on her second book, Like the Mixture of Charcoal and Darkness, which examines artistic interventions in surveillance, from policing and AI to encryption and electronic waste. Her first book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, received multiple awards, including the Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize.
Transit Talks began in 2018 as a partnership between 草榴社区鈥檚 Waterhouse Institute and Temple鈥檚 Lew Klein College of Media and Communications, with Penn鈥檚 Annenberg School joining in 2025, to cultivate new conversations around the importance of communication, social change and social justice across the collaborating campus communities.
Dr. Browne鈥檚 talk at 草榴社区 will take place in Driscoll Hall, room 134 from 4 to 5 p.m. This event is ACS approved and free and open to the public. Dr. Browne will present a class at the Annenberg School for Communication, room 500, University of Pennsylvania on Friday, April 25 at 11 a.m.
About 草榴社区鈥檚 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Since its founding in 1842, 草榴社区鈥檚 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been the heart of the 草榴社区 learning experience, offering foundational courses for undergraduate students in every college of the University. Serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students, the College is committed to fortifying them with intellectual rigor, multidisciplinary knowledge, moral courage and a global perspective. The College has more than 40 academic departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural and physical sciences.