As postcolonial regimes technologically advance their social control and monitoring capabilities in both digital and physical spaces, how are they informed by colonial and postcolonial logics of surveillance and punishment? How are such advancements transforming cultures of authoritarian institutions, and what is the impact on administrative discretion, bureaucratic autonomy, norms and practices? What are the affective and intersectional consequences of such advancements for local communities, particularly in sociopolitical contexts where state legitimacy remains contested? Inspired by debates in critical criminology, surveillance studies, and sociolegal research, my research investigates imperial entanglements in emerging policing and surveillance landscapes and in the regulatory frameworks designed for digital participation, including cybercrime laws. In this presentation, I first draw upon recently published historically informed ethnographic research on internet governance and smart-policing technology in Pakistan to identify pathways through which colonial counterinsurgency policing facilitates the onset of digital authoritarianism. Next, I outline an agenda developing this work across South and Southeast Asia, to examine state complicity in the production of digital harm and capture how histories, institutions, and community experiences are collectively shaping state-society relations in a rapidly digitizing world.

About the speaker:

Zoha Waseem is Associate Professor in Criminology at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Comparative and Public Law, University of Hong Kong. She holds an LLB from SOAS and an MA and PhD from King’s College London. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at University College London’s Centre for Global City Policing. Her interdisciplinary research explores policing, criminal justice, surveillance, urban insecurity, migration, identity, and human rights in South Asia. She authored Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters, and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi (Oxford University Press, 2022) and co-edited Southern and Postcolonial Perspectives on Policing, Security, and Social Order (Bristol University Press, 2024). She is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook on Urban Violence. Waseem is also a non-resident scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s South Asia program and co-coordinator of the international platform, the Urban Violence Research Network.

📅 Date: 19 November 2026

🕑 Time: 2:00pm - 3:30pm

📍 Venue: CJT-9.29

🗣️ Language: English

This seminar is exclusively open to faculty members and research postgraduate (RPg) students in the Department of Sociology.