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About Kelly
Kelly Gates is Associate Professor of Communication and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her PhD in Communications Research from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2004. At UCSD, she teaches courses on the history of communication research, the Internet and society, the cultural history of photography and visual culture, and surveillance and the risk society. Professor Gates’ research centers on the critical analysis of digital media technologies, with a primary focus on the politics and social implications of computerization, particularly the automation of surveillance in the United States from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Her work examines how new visual imaging and archiving technologies are incorporated into investigatory and evidentiary practices, including video forensics, police body-worn cameras, video management systems, and video analytics. This research highlights the integration of video content, technologies, expertise, and infrastructures into policing and security, as well as the evolving relationship between public policing and private corporations.
Professor Gates has authored several influential books, including Targeted: Corporations and the Police Surveillance Economy (NYU Press, 2025), which explores the video avalanche in policing through video forensics, private surveillance infrastructure, body-worn cameras, and video AI; and Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance (New York University Press, 2011), which investigates efforts since the 1960s to develop automated facial recognition and expression analysis, arguing against claims of culturally neutral computer vision. She edited International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Vol. 6: Media Studies Futures (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and co-edited The New Media of Surveillance (Routledge, 2009). Her articles include “Infrastructure Photography and the AI Data Center Building Boom” (Photography and Culture, 2025), “Day of Rage: Forensic Journalism and the US Capitol Riot” (Media, Culture & Society, 2023), “COVID-19 and the Care of the Financialized Self” (TOPIA, 2022), and “Media Evidence and Forensic Journalism” (Surveillance & Society, 2020), among others addressing forensic sensibility, police media work, and big data surveillance.
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