post by Anjela Mikhaylova (2022 cohort)
A Placement Journey with CNWA into the Lived Ethics of Surveillance
Some placements begin with a desk, a login, and a to-do list. Mine began with a smart doorbell – small, glowing, watching. Not just a gadget, but a quiet presence on the threshold between public and private lives.
I knew from the start I didn’t want this placement to be a box-ticking exercise. I wanted to move beyond reports and statistics into the lived realities of the people whose doorsteps, and stories, these devices quietly watch over. That opportunity came through a placement with Cumbria Neighbourhood Watch Association (CNWA), working alongside QPM Joe Murray, a grassroots safety leader deeply embedded in local networks.
Placement Overview – Activities and Outcomes
I arrived with a plan: test my academic frameworks in the field and see how they held up in practice. How do residents, police, and bystanders actually experience surveillance? Are doorbell cameras protective, invasive, or both?
We designed an anonymous survey in MS Forms, with an opt-in at the end for those willing to be contacted for follow-up interviews. This reached a diverse group: smart doorbell owners, people captured by neighbours’ devices, and police officers involved in local safety initiatives. The anonymised responses were as layered as they were revealing. One early survey response captured the complexity: “I didn’t buy it [smart doorbell] for surveillance, I bought it for peace of mind.” Surveillance, I realised, isn’t always about watching others: sometimes it’s about creating a sense of security for yourself.
Over the course of the placement, I gathered a mix of perspectives, moments, and reflections. Those conversations and survey responses have already shaped multiple co-authored papers: “Smart Doorbells in a Surveillance Society,” presented at the ETHICOMP2025 conference, and “Smart Doorbell Surveillance: Breaching All Seven Types of Privacy”, now under review with the journal Surveillance & Society. I also plan to weave the placement’s findings into my thesis and into a forthcoming article, “From Surveillance to Reassurance: The Lived Experience of Smart Doorbells,” a natural extension of this work, which is also under review. Beyond the immediate outputs, the placement left a lasting imprint on my research itself, and as I move into the writing stage, I carry with me a renewed sense of purpose.
Understanding the Partner’s Concerns and Adapting My Skills
Those outputs didn’t appear out of nowhere. They grew out of a process that ended up looking very different from the plan I arrived with. My original plan was to conduct face-to-face interviews. But early conversations with Mr Murray made it clear that some participants might feel uneasy discussing sensitive topics in that format. So, we pivoted to an anonymous survey – a small change on paper, but one that prioritised safety, autonomy, and comfort. Participants could share their experiences on their own terms, with the option to be contacted later if they wished.
I had to adapt quickly: revising my ethics application, reframing academic language, and softening some of my critical assumptions about surveillance. Before this placement, my research lens was sharply critical. Influenced by Foucault’s Panopticism and Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism, I saw smart doorbells primarily as instruments of surveillance, control, and visibility. Once I started listening to real stories without trying to fit every answer into these frameworks, the placement began to open up in ways I couldn’t have predicted, and that’s when the voices I’d been missing came through most clearly.
Placement – PhD Connection
Working with CNWA grounded my PhD and continues to influence my methods, language, and scope. It pushed me to hold my critiques alongside another reality: for some, these devices are less about surveillance and more about feeling seen, protected, and connected. As one respondent summed it up: “I feel visible, but finally on my own terms.”
That shift didn’t mean abandoning critique. Instead, it deepened it. My thesis will no longer focus solely on critique. It will reflect complexity, contradiction, and care. My frameworks – Foucault, Zuboff – still guide me, but now they walk alongside lived experience, recognising that surveillance isn’t just theoretical anymore. It’s intimate, negotiated, and sometimes life-affirming, capable of being both protective and problematic, sometimes in the same moment.
The themes that emerged: privacy boundaries, control over personal data, perceptions of safety, and the behavioural shifts that come with visibility – now constitute a core focus of my thesis. The link between my placement and my PhD is a two‑way exchange: placement fed into my research, and my research shaped how I approached the placement.
Industry vs Academia: A Different Kind of Urgency
CNWA’s collaborative style was refreshingly agile, always attuned to the real needs at hand. In contrast, the academic journey, marked by evolved drafts, reshaping revisions and peer reviews, unfolds at a deliberate, methodical pace. At CNWA, the rhythm flowed with a different cadence: swift, responsive, and grounded in people-first ethical pragmatism, with an emphasis on immediate impact. Project moved quickly from idea to action, supported by short, personal feedback loops.
Experiencing this contrast meant adapting my own working style and priorities. Above all, I learnt that growth comes from letting the world push back on your framework and honouring the emotional weight behind data. The placement didn’t just give me a different pace of work, it offered a model for how research can live beyond the university, grounded in both ethical responsibility and real-world relevance.
Creating Our Lives in Data
For me, this was no longer about studying data from a distance but about understanding how people live with it, and why that matters. One participant told me, “I know it’s watching, but at least I chose who gets to see.” Another said, “I don’t care who sees the footage as long as I know someone’s watching.”
That quiet assertion of control revealed what data agency looks like in real life. It was not simply about compliance with abstract privacy laws, but about emotional autonomy and dignity. I came to see that data is never neutral or detached, instead, it is lived, charged with emotion, trust, and power.
This shift in perspective now shapes how I think about surveillance: not as a purely technical or legal issue, but as something deeply human, negotiated in the spaces where technology meets lived experience.
My message to future CDT and PGR students preparing for their placements:
If I could leave one message for future CDT PGR students, it would be this: the plan you arrive with is just your starting point, not the map you have to follow. Come prepared, but leave space for change. It might feel uncomfortable at times when real conversations, real lives, and real needs challenge your frameworks and your assumptions, like mine, but that shift is often where the richest insights emerge. So, yes, bring structure. But stay flexible.