prof.dr.mr. MB (Marc) Schuilenburg

Biography

Marc Schuilenburg is Professor of Digital Surveillance at Erasmus School of Law, with a current focus on the integration of AI and algorithms in public safety

Marc Schuilenburg was appointed in 2021 as Professor of Digital Surveillance at Erasmus School of Law. Schuilenburg studied at the School of Law and the Faculty of Philosophy of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He obtained his PhD in social sciences at the VU University Amsterdam. From 2012-2023, he worked as assistent professor at the VU University Amsterdam. Before his university teaching, he worked for six years for the Dutch Prosecution Service.

In his appointment as Professor of Digital Surveillance, Schuilenburg studies - with his PhD's, colleagues and students - the way in which public safety is changing due to the rise of different forms of AI-tools. How can AI and algorithms improve the prevention and detection of crime and anti-social behaviour? To what extent does AI raise new questions with respect to public values? Schuilenburg is interested how AI-tools can be designed with ‘care’ and sensibly to democratic values such as fairness, accountability and transparency. Special attention is given how AI-tools are understood, articulated, experienced or even resisted by various actors, and how these experiences can have real consequences in daily practice.

Schuilenburg is the initiator of Dutch Surveillance Studies Network, a platform dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary dialogues and collaboration in the field of surveillance studies. He is one of the primary investigators in the 4-year NWO-program AI-Maps (Artifical Intelligence in Multi-Agency Public Safety) - an multi-disciplinary reserach project which focuses on the ethical, legal and societal aspects of AI. Next to this, he is one of the primary researchers in the 3-year EU-project KOBAN, developing an evidence-based capability framework (AI, skills, knowledge) for Community Policing that can be customized by police forces and communities across Europe to fit their specific needs, perspectives, and contexts.

He is the author of Making Surveillance Public (2024). In this book, he explores the deployment of AI applications, asking who is using them, what their aims are, what outcomes and societal impacts they lead to, and against whom they are used. To this end, he makes a case for a digital criminology centred on sociological questions of power, knowledge and AI-experiences. Sociologist Gary Marx called 'Making Surveilance Public' a 'cogent, crisp, and convincing book on the challenges brought by AI and big data applications with respect to crime control and security'.

In this video interview, find out why Marc Schuilenburg believes that surveillance today cannot be understood without an awareness of how AI and algorithms have become increasingly central in the governance of security.

Schuilenburg published the critically and highly acclaimed books Hysteria (2021), The Securitization of Society (2015) and Mediapolis (2006). He edited eight books, including The Algorithmic Society (2021) and Positive Criminology (2014). His PhD on security assemblages in urban environments was awarded the triennial Willem Nagel Prize by the Dutch Society of Criminology. Schuilenburg has been a visiting professor in New York (John Jay College, 2013) and Ipswich (University Campus Suffolk, 2014-2020).

Schuilenburg has been featured in (inter)national newspaper, radio and television media outlets, including VICE, Open Democracy, NPO Radio, Nieuwsuur, NRC Handelsblad, de Volkskrant, Trouw, de Groene Amsterdammer, Euronews, Follow the Money, the Correspondent, NOS, and Arte.