Until August 2009, he was Reader in Surveillance Studies in the Global Urban Research Unit at Newcastle University in the UK. He had an ESRC Research Fellowship for a project called Cultures of Urban Surveillance, which looked at the globalization of surveillance in different global cities. David is a member of The Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's and is part of The New Transparency research initiative. He is also Managing Editor of Surveillance & Society, the international journal of surveillance studies, and a founder-member of the Surveillance Studies Network.