Magdalena Donea

Magdalena is a doctoral candidate in the Communication and Science Studies program at UC San Diego. Her dissertation considers critically the affective and phenomenological dimensions of being under surveillance, particularly for migrant, refugee and other already-displaced communities. Grounded in critical surveillance and critical data studies, affect theory, and scholarship on belonging, her research considers critically urban surveillance infrastructures, municipal oversight bodies that regulate surveillance technologies, and grassroots community-based organizations that resist them. Moving through and beyond questions of how displaced people are represented and become objects of knowledge in crisis and security discourses, she asks instead how surveillance regimes contribute to affective displacement, how feelings of un-belonging emerge among migrant communities as a result of being watched, and how communities under surveillance work to subvert the gaze of these regimes to reclaim their emotional privacy and a sense of emplacement and belonging. Ms. Donea holds an M.A. in Communication from UC San Diego, an M.A. in Cultural Studies and Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies from the University of Washington, is a veteran of the technology industry and a member of the City of San Diego's Privacy Advisory Board.