David Phillips

Biography

David J. Phillips holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication, an MSE in Computer Science from Penn, and a BFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His brings this interdisciplinarity to his study of surveillance, queer theory, and infrastructure studies. He is the author of many works exploring the relations among information, economics, ideology, policy, culture, identity, and technology. His most recent work employs theatre performance as both pedagogy and research method.David J. Phillips holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication, an MSE in Computer Science from Penn, and a BFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His brings this interdisciplinarity to his study of surveillance, queer theory, and infrastructure studies. He is the author of many works exploring the relations among information, economics, ideology, policy, culture, identity, and technology. His most recent work employs theatre performance as both pedagogy and research method.

Research Interest

Professor Phillips investigates the political, economic, social, and technical configuration of surveillance and ubiquitous computing. He questions how we are human within a world structured and organized by surveillance practice, and whether and how infrastructures of data exchange and knowledge production can be made amenable to democratic action, non-normative identities and ideals, and queer world-making. Dr. Phillips is a co-creator of “Work and Play at the Thresholds of Legibility.” The collaborative theatre piece explores two themes: the ways life is contorted to become legible to surveillance systems, and the pains and pleasures of those remaining illegible.