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• Surveillance and Social Sorting
• Big Data Surveillance
• Identification Regimes
• Privacy
• Information Technologies
• Christian Social Critique

David Lyon's research, writing, and teaching interests revolve around major social transformations in the modern world. Questions of the information society, globalization, secularization, surveillance, and debates over “post-” and “digital” modernity feature prominently in his work. Lyon was formerly an editor of Surveillance & Society and is Associate Editor of The Information Society. He also serves on the international editorial boards of several other journals. His books have been translated into eighteen languages: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Surveillance

Surveillance Studies has been Lyon’s major research area for the past 25 years. He brings a sociological perspective to bear on the issues raised by personal data processing in a database-dependent world. His surveillance interests include border and airport controls, social media, organizational routines, video camera surveillance, citizen registration and identification systems and social media. His concerns include, prominently, the social sorting capacities of contemporary surveillance, along with an exploration of their ethics and politics.

From the mid-1980s, Lyon's broad concerns prompted a critical examination of the much-hyped ‘microelectronics revolution’ that gave way to the so-called ‘information society.’ In the 1990s, Lyon focused his analyses on the social origins, incidence and consequences of processing personal data, arguing that surveillance has become a major dimension of modernity in its own right. This aspect of his research has expanded considerably, especially since 9/11, and involves extensive collaboration with colleagues and students. Surveillance is a globalized phenomenon, and Lyon's work focuses increasingly on the global south and on encouraging the development of Surveillance Studies networks around the world.

From 2008-2010 David Lyon was a Canada Council Killam Research Fellow, investigating the current rise of national ID card systems in a cross-national comparative perspective. The work complements some of his other studies of surveillance and contributes to both empirical and theoretical understanding of contemporary smart, biometrics-based ID systems.

Currently, Lyon is working towards a book on surveillance critique, Surveillance and the Eye of God.

Secularization

While he is best known for his work in Surveillance Studies, David Lyon’s research and writing span several other areas as well. Starting in Historical Sociology in the 1970s, his early work was on secularization processes – and the critique of some key theories -- in the modern world. Today, he tries to keep abreast of debates over the "post-secular" with an emphasis on the work of Charles Taylor. Following this, his main research directions explore other forms of social transformation that are both characteristic and constitutive of modernity.

As Director of the former , Lyon worked with a multidisciplinary and international team on several related initiatives from primary research to theoretical development as well as associated media, policy and advocacy activities. The most recent team project was on “Big Data Surveillance” (‘BDS’ 2015-2020) and was funded by the SSHRC Partnership Grant program. It has streams on security, marketing and governance. Among other things, the project produced a major report, and an edited book, Big Data Surveillance and Security Intelligence: The Canadian Case, edited by David Lyon and David Murakami Wood (2022).

In 2005, Lyon was awarded a Queen’s Research Chair in Surveillance Studies. In 2007 Lyon received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association Communication and Information Technology Section and in 2008 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2012 he received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Canadian Sociological Association, in 2015 an Insight-Impact Award from the SSHRC and in 2016 an from the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Switzerland. In 2017, Lyon received a ���˴�Ƭ Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision. And in 2020 Lyon was nationally recognized in Canada with the .

Surveillance

Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction, (forthcoming, Oxford University Press 2024)

, (Polity 2022)

(Polity 2018)

(Polity 2015)

(Athabasca University Press, co-authored, 2014) also at http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120237/

 (with Zygmunt Bauman, Polity 2013) 

 (Polity 2009)

,
(co-edited with Colin Bennett, Routledge 2008)

, (Polity 2007)

, (editor; Willan 2006)

, (Polity 2003)

, (Routledge 2003)

, (Open University Press, 2001)

, (co-edited with Elia Zureik; Minnesota 1996)

, (Polity 1994)

Contemporary Society

, (Open University Press 1994; second edition, revised, 1999)

, (Polity 1988)

Religion

, (Polity 2000)

, (co-edited with Marguerite Van Die; University of Toronto Press 2000)

, (Quarry Press 1995)

, (SPCK 1985)