Angela YT Chan 
Louis Cook and I will share our presentation, titled ‘Emerging Technology Research through Investigative Arts and Low-Tech Game Design’, as a sharing of our game development processes and ethics for Sound, Sensors and Surveillance’ at The First Annual THESEUS Conference, on Saturday, 28th November 2026.
‘Sound, Sensors and Surveillance’ critiques the emerging technology Distributed Acoustic Sensing, an environmental monitoring device that may be used for ‘smart city’ applications. The game narrative explores the dual-use origins of DAS and brings the player into the speculative scenarios in which increased powers for state surveillance could see this technology deployed and exacerbate existing social injustices.
“Emerging technologies developed within academic research play a crucial role in advancing science, innovation, and social well-being. However, many of these technologies have a dual-use potential: the same knowledge, methods, or tools that enable beneficial applications may also be repurposed for military or harmful uses. This duality raises important questions about research responsibility, academic freedom, ethics, and governance.
This international conference invites contributions exploring dual-use technologies in academic research from both engineering and social sciences and humanities (SSH/STS) perspectives. Its goal is to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on how dual-use concerns emerge, how they are addressed in practice, and how they influence or reshape the relationship between technology, society, and institutions.
The THESEUS Study Centre – Technology, Society and Humanity encourages and promotes integration between applied sciences, particularly engineering, and humanities and social sciences with reference to technology, its preconditions and its social, economic, political and environmental impact.”
Call for abstracts topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
- Conceptualizations of dual use and misuse of research results
- Dual-use research of concern (DURC) in academic contexts
- Ethical and societal implications of dual-use technologies
- Governance, and institutional oversight of research
- Academic freedom, security concerns, and state regulation
- Collaboration with industry, government, and international partners
- Dissemination, publication, and responsibility in research communication
- Economic models of dual-use innovation, knowledge diffusion, and R&D incentives
- Trade, export controls, and sanctions in dual-use goods
- Dual use regulation, industrial policy, and firm behavior
- National security, defense economics, and spillovers to civilian markets
Read more about THESUS and the programme here.