Brie McLemore

My research focuses on the adoption and integration of technology in "smart cities" and the implications for surveillance. More specifically, my dissertation situates Smart Street Lights as a case study for understanding why cities adopt specific technologies and how technologies become a tool of the Carceral State, even when this is not their intended purpose. My work explores what the uncritical adoption of technology means for privacy in the urban landscape, particularly for over-policed Black communities.

I have served as a Senior Policy Manager at Color of Change working on issues of corporate accountability and racial justice in the tech industry. I have also worked on issues regarding surveillance and policing at PolicyLink, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Boston Public Health Commission. I am a current Graduate Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. I am a former Health Policy Research Scholar at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Fellow, Human Rights By Design Fellow for Technology and Human Rights, Center for Technology, Science, and Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and William P. Heidrich Research Fellow at the University of Michigan. My research has been funded by the Reinhard Bendix and Allan Sharlin grant and Black Graduate Collective Development Fellowship. I have also been a selected workshop participant for the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, the Global Black Feminisms Summer Lab, and the Nordic Summer University. I have also received awards for the Best Ph.D. paper at the Howard League for Penal Reform International Conference and the Isak Kazes Prize in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University.

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy with a designated emphasis in Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. I have a Masters in Public Policy/Master of Arts in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Gender Studies from New College of Florida.