Ajay Sandhu
Biographic Data
| ID | 309177 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ajay Sandhu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ajay |
| FAMILY NAME | Sandhu |
| SIGNATURE | SANDHU A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2567-7002 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
‘We’re recording you too, bud
The widespread adoption of body-worn cameras (BWCs) has transformed the landscape of police visibility. While BWCs are commonly understood as technologies for evidence collection and police accountability, less attention has been paid to how police officers themselves understand the technology as a means of responding to citizen journalism. Drawing on interviews with frontline officers from one of Canada's largest municipal police services, this …
‘History is written by the victor … but in some cases, it's also now written by the recordings’
This research examines the evolving complexities in the realm of police visibility with a focus on how frontline police officers experience and respond to the enhanced visibility that their body-worn cameras facilitate. By adding a layer wherein officers can actively participate in shaping the visual narrative of their actions, body-worn cameras challenge and expand earlier frameworks of police visibility. Our findings highlight the double-edged …
Decolonizing fashion [studies] as process
In this Special Issue, we explore decolonizing fashion studies not as a destination but as non-linear process, ever revised, re-evaluated, revisited and relived. Situated within a space of self-questioning, the authors in this Special Issue embrace unresolved contradictions and unresolvable paradoxes inherent to the very being of fashion. They are participants, aware that there is no pure pre-colonial space to return to, no ‘authentic’ pre-coloni…
Mahila1 à la mode
The stylized fashion figure or croqui is fundamental to the fashion design process. Highly regarded as a tool for design articulation and innovation, it is also an immensely popular creative art form, enjoying a recent renaissance on social media platforms. Most fashion institutions across the globe teach illustration as a foundation-level skill. Students absorb a strict set of rules dictated by the ten-head body proportion. This article explores…
Less is more
India’s fashion industry experienced spectacular growth in the decades after economic liberalization. The positive outlook brought about by liberalization led to the development of a culture of design built on the backs of textile crafts centred around material excess informed by re-orientalist viewpoints as well as selective references to India’s freedom movement. Most recently, however, a newer generation of designers shunned the visual exubera…
Police officers as filmmakers
The impact of body worn cameras on policing will depend on multiple factors such as effective training, and high-quality technological design. Among these factors, we argue, are police officer's understanding and operation of body worn cameras. Operation involves user decisions about when to activate a body worn camera and where to direct its lens. With that in mind, we propose that police officers, especially when ineffectively regulated by poli…
When sarees speak
Through an ethnographic study of online saree pacts and social media groups, this article charts the emergence of digital saree storytelling as women from India and the global South Asian diaspora post stories about their personal and professional lives while also talking about their sarees. The article examines how saree stories are told and consumed in these online spaces, and the role new media plays in encouraging individual and collective se…
Between Islam and Islamophobia
We use data from qualitative interviews with forty atheist activists in two Canadian cities to analyze the politics of critiquing Islam in the contemporary political environment. We show that atheist activists struggle to navigate between their criticisms of Islam, their fears of being labeled “Islamophobic” (taken as a synonym for “racist” or “xenophobic”), and their concerns about contributing to anti-Muslim rhetoric. To manage this struggle, a…
Fashioning Wellbeing Through Craft
As the Indian fashion industry responds to calls for sustainable fashion innovation, many designers consciously look back to India’s rich history of craft to propose solutions for the future. By focusing on the emerging dialogue on craft and sustainability and the work of designer Aneeth Arora for the label Péro, this paper illustrates how through shifting the emphasis towards a model of design for wellbeing, the foundation for which are embedded…
Surveillance arbitration in the era of digital policing
This article analyses adoptions of innovative technology into police surveillance activities. Extending the nascent body of empirical research on digital policing, the article draws on qualitative interview data of operational police uses of advanced surveillance technologies. Separate illustrative examples are drawn from social media intelligence gathering, digital forensics and covert online child sexual exploitation investigations. Here, surve…
The ‘uberization of policing’? How police negotiate and operationalise predictive policing technology
Predictive policing generally refers to police work that utilises strategies, algorithmic technologies, and big data to generate near-future predictions about the people and places deemed likely to be involved in or experience crime. Claimed benefits of predictive policing centre on the technology’s ability to enable pre-emptive police work by automating police decisions. The goal is that officers will rely on computer software and smartphone app…
The Guilty Pleasures of Saas-Bahu Style
Clothing and fashion play a prominent part in the presentation of key female characters in Indian television family dramas, referred to as saas-bahu serials.11. Saas = mother-in-law; bahu = daughter-in-law. The purposeful sartorial branding of the characters is in touch with, as well as influencing, popular fashion off screen, which in turn further impacts the success of these serials. Geared towards daily viewership, such fashions remain exclude…
I’m glad that was on camera’
In the surveillance society, the police are increasingly monitored by a growing network of cameras. Contemporary studies have begun to pay attention to the new and highly visible reality that police officers occupy, and speculate about how this reality impacts police work. Attention is also given to how police officers, as the subjects experiencing this higher visibility, understand, and adapt to camera-packed environments, both of which are key …
Camera-friendly Policing
How do police respond to the presence of cameras and photographers? Many speculative theories have been proposed offering mixed and sometimes contradictory answers to this question. Some theories propose that cameras will deter police misconduct, others suggest that cameras might improve police accountability, others suggest that police might respond to cameras by engaging in a risk-averse style of policing. Unfortunately, little empirical data i…
Policing on camera
On any shift a police officer might be filmed by some combination of public or private surveillance cameras, including the cameras of individual citizens, activists, journalists, businesses, and a range of police-controlled cameras. This loosely coordinated camera infrastructure is part of the broader transformation of policing from a historically “low visibility” to an increasingly ‘high visibility’ occupation. This article reports on the findin…
The Police Crisis of Visibility [Commentary]
Didier Fassin, Enforcing Order
Matthew W. Hughey, White Bound
Matthew W. Hughey, White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012, 286 pp., $24.95 paper (9780804776950) Whiteness studies have emphasized the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity of racial categories. this is certainly an important lesson, it is at the same time crucial to remember that (p. 13) are linked by transposable social norms that to some extent cut across het…
The ‘uberization of policing’? How police negotiate and operationalise predictive policing technology
Predictive policing generally refers to police work that utilises strategies, algorithmic technologies, and big data to generate near-future predictions about the people and places deemed likely to be involved in or experience crime. Claimed benefits of predictive policing centre on the technology’s ability to enable pre-emptive police work by automating police decisions. The goal is that officers will rely on computer software and smartphone app…
I’m glad that was on camera’
In the surveillance society, the police are increasingly monitored by a growing network of cameras. Contemporary studies have begun to pay attention to the new and highly visible reality that police officers occupy, and speculate about how this reality impacts police work. Attention is also given to how police officers, as the subjects experiencing this higher visibility, understand, and adapt to camera-packed environments, both of which are key …
Policing on camera
On any shift a police officer might be filmed by some combination of public or private surveillance cameras, including the cameras of individual citizens, activists, journalists, businesses, and a range of police-controlled cameras. This loosely coordinated camera infrastructure is part of the broader transformation of policing from a historically “low visibility” to an increasingly ‘high visibility’ occupation. This article reports on the findin…
Surveillance arbitration in the era of digital policing
This article analyses adoptions of innovative technology into police surveillance activities. Extending the nascent body of empirical research on digital policing, the article draws on qualitative interview data of operational police uses of advanced surveillance technologies. Separate illustrative examples are drawn from social media intelligence gathering, digital forensics and covert online child sexual exploitation investigations. Here, surve…
Decolonizing fashion [studies] as process
In this Special Issue, we explore decolonizing fashion studies not as a destination but as non-linear process, ever revised, re-evaluated, revisited and relived. Situated within a space of self-questioning, the authors in this Special Issue embrace unresolved contradictions and unresolvable paradoxes inherent to the very being of fashion. They are participants, aware that there is no pure pre-colonial space to return to, no ‘authentic’ pre-coloni…
Camera-friendly Policing
How do police respond to the presence of cameras and photographers? Many speculative theories have been proposed offering mixed and sometimes contradictory answers to this question. Some theories propose that cameras will deter police misconduct, others suggest that cameras might improve police accountability, others suggest that police might respond to cameras by engaging in a risk-averse style of policing. Unfortunately, little empirical data i…
When sarees speak
Through an ethnographic study of online saree pacts and social media groups, this article charts the emergence of digital saree storytelling as women from India and the global South Asian diaspora post stories about their personal and professional lives while also talking about their sarees. The article examines how saree stories are told and consumed in these online spaces, and the role new media plays in encouraging individual and collective se…
Mahila1 à la mode
The stylized fashion figure or croqui is fundamental to the fashion design process. Highly regarded as a tool for design articulation and innovation, it is also an immensely popular creative art form, enjoying a recent renaissance on social media platforms. Most fashion institutions across the globe teach illustration as a foundation-level skill. Students absorb a strict set of rules dictated by the ten-head body proportion. This article explores…
Less is more
India’s fashion industry experienced spectacular growth in the decades after economic liberalization. The positive outlook brought about by liberalization led to the development of a culture of design built on the backs of textile crafts centred around material excess informed by re-orientalist viewpoints as well as selective references to India’s freedom movement. Most recently, however, a newer generation of designers shunned the visual exubera…
The Guilty Pleasures of Saas-Bahu Style
Clothing and fashion play a prominent part in the presentation of key female characters in Indian television family dramas, referred to as saas-bahu serials.11. Saas = mother-in-law; bahu = daughter-in-law. The purposeful sartorial branding of the characters is in touch with, as well as influencing, popular fashion off screen, which in turn further impacts the success of these serials. Geared towards daily viewership, such fashions remain exclude…
Matthew W. Hughey, White Bound
Matthew W. Hughey, White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012, 286 pp., $24.95 paper (9780804776950) Whiteness studies have emphasized the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity of racial categories. this is certainly an important lesson, it is at the same time crucial to remember that (p. 13) are linked by transposable social norms that to some extent cut across het…
Didier Fassin, Enforcing Order
The Police Crisis of Visibility [Commentary]
Policing on camera
On any shift a police officer might be filmed by some combination of public or private surveillance cameras, including the cameras of individual citizens, activists, journalists, businesses, and a range of police-controlled cameras. This loosely coordinated camera infrastructure is part of the broader transformation of policing from a historically “low visibility” to an increasingly ‘high visibility’ occupation. This article reports on the findin…
Camera-friendly Policing
How do police respond to the presence of cameras and photographers? Many speculative theories have been proposed offering mixed and sometimes contradictory answers to this question. Some theories propose that cameras will deter police misconduct, others suggest that cameras might improve police accountability, others suggest that police might respond to cameras by engaging in a risk-averse style of policing. Unfortunately, little empirical data i…
I’m glad that was on camera’
In the surveillance society, the police are increasingly monitored by a growing network of cameras. Contemporary studies have begun to pay attention to the new and highly visible reality that police officers occupy, and speculate about how this reality impacts police work. Attention is also given to how police officers, as the subjects experiencing this higher visibility, understand, and adapt to camera-packed environments, both of which are key …
Between Islam and Islamophobia
We use data from qualitative interviews with forty atheist activists in two Canadian cities to analyze the politics of critiquing Islam in the contemporary political environment. We show that atheist activists struggle to navigate between their criticisms of Islam, their fears of being labeled “Islamophobic” (taken as a synonym for “racist” or “xenophobic”), and their concerns about contributing to anti-Muslim rhetoric. To manage this struggle, a…
Fashioning Wellbeing Through Craft
As the Indian fashion industry responds to calls for sustainable fashion innovation, many designers consciously look back to India’s rich history of craft to propose solutions for the future. By focusing on the emerging dialogue on craft and sustainability and the work of designer Aneeth Arora for the label Péro, this paper illustrates how through shifting the emphasis towards a model of design for wellbeing, the foundation for which are embedded…
Surveillance arbitration in the era of digital policing
This article analyses adoptions of innovative technology into police surveillance activities. Extending the nascent body of empirical research on digital policing, the article draws on qualitative interview data of operational police uses of advanced surveillance technologies. Separate illustrative examples are drawn from social media intelligence gathering, digital forensics and covert online child sexual exploitation investigations. Here, surve…
The ‘uberization of policing’? How police negotiate and operationalise predictive policing technology
Predictive policing generally refers to police work that utilises strategies, algorithmic technologies, and big data to generate near-future predictions about the people and places deemed likely to be involved in or experience crime. Claimed benefits of predictive policing centre on the technology’s ability to enable pre-emptive police work by automating police decisions. The goal is that officers will rely on computer software and smartphone app…
The Guilty Pleasures of Saas-Bahu Style
Clothing and fashion play a prominent part in the presentation of key female characters in Indian television family dramas, referred to as saas-bahu serials.11. Saas = mother-in-law; bahu = daughter-in-law. The purposeful sartorial branding of the characters is in touch with, as well as influencing, popular fashion off screen, which in turn further impacts the success of these serials. Geared towards daily viewership, such fashions remain exclude…
Decolonizing fashion [studies] as process
In this Special Issue, we explore decolonizing fashion studies not as a destination but as non-linear process, ever revised, re-evaluated, revisited and relived. Situated within a space of self-questioning, the authors in this Special Issue embrace unresolved contradictions and unresolvable paradoxes inherent to the very being of fashion. They are participants, aware that there is no pure pre-colonial space to return to, no ‘authentic’ pre-coloni…
Mahila1 à la mode
The stylized fashion figure or croqui is fundamental to the fashion design process. Highly regarded as a tool for design articulation and innovation, it is also an immensely popular creative art form, enjoying a recent renaissance on social media platforms. Most fashion institutions across the globe teach illustration as a foundation-level skill. Students absorb a strict set of rules dictated by the ten-head body proportion. This article explores…
Less is more
India’s fashion industry experienced spectacular growth in the decades after economic liberalization. The positive outlook brought about by liberalization led to the development of a culture of design built on the backs of textile crafts centred around material excess informed by re-orientalist viewpoints as well as selective references to India’s freedom movement. Most recently, however, a newer generation of designers shunned the visual exubera…
Police officers as filmmakers
The impact of body worn cameras on policing will depend on multiple factors such as effective training, and high-quality technological design. Among these factors, we argue, are police officer's understanding and operation of body worn cameras. Operation involves user decisions about when to activate a body worn camera and where to direct its lens. With that in mind, we propose that police officers, especially when ineffectively regulated by poli…
When sarees speak
Through an ethnographic study of online saree pacts and social media groups, this article charts the emergence of digital saree storytelling as women from India and the global South Asian diaspora post stories about their personal and professional lives while also talking about their sarees. The article examines how saree stories are told and consumed in these online spaces, and the role new media plays in encouraging individual and collective se…
‘We’re recording you too, bud
The widespread adoption of body-worn cameras (BWCs) has transformed the landscape of police visibility. While BWCs are commonly understood as technologies for evidence collection and police accountability, less attention has been paid to how police officers themselves understand the technology as a means of responding to citizen journalism. Drawing on interviews with frontline officers from one of Canada's largest municipal police services, this …
‘History is written by the victor … but in some cases, it's also now written by the recordings’
This research examines the evolving complexities in the realm of police visibility with a focus on how frontline police officers experience and respond to the enhanced visibility that their body-worn cameras facilitate. By adding a layer wherein officers can actively participate in shaping the visual narrative of their actions, body-worn cameras challenge and expand earlier frameworks of police visibility. Our findings highlight the double-edged …
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (9 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Fashion and Cultural Textiles (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Business (5 works)