Simone Arlene Browne (born 1973) is an author and educator. She is on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin,^[1] and the author of Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.

Browne was born in 1973,^[2] and grew up in Toronto, Ontario, where she received a BA (with honors), MA, and PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the University of Toronto.^[3] Her 2001 Masters thesis was titled Surveilling the Jamaican body, leisure imperialism, immigration and the Canadian imagination.^[2] Her doctoral dissertation in 2007 was titled Trusted travellers: the identity-industrial complex, race and Canada's permanent resident card.^[4]

Browne is a Professor of Black Studies in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.^[1] Her most recent book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, published by Duke University Press in 2015, presents a case to consider race and blackness as a central to the field of surveillance studies, and investigates the roots of present-day surveillance in practices originating in slavery and the Jim Crow era.^[5][6] Javier Arbona of the University of California, Davis, said "her wholly original scholarship best captures new kinds of thinking and theorizing in surveillance studies".^[7]

She is a member of Deep Lab, a "congress of cyber-feminist researchers."^[8]

She is also on the executive board of HASTAC, a virtual organization led by a dynamic Steering Committee consisting of innovators from a variety of disciplines.^[9]

Her work, "Not Only Will I Stare," involves the curation of an exhibit about surveillance through black women artists at the University of Texas at Austin.^[10] The exhibit "used the space to showcase selected artists and artwork which reflect the intersections and evolving history of surveillance and the Black community."^[11]

• Presidential Visiting Fellow for the 2018–2019 academic year, Yale University^[10]
• Winner of the 2016 Best Book Prize, Surveillance Studies Network^[12]
• Winner of the 2016 Lora Romero First Book Prize, American Studies Association^[13]
• Winner of the 2015 Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Technology Research^[1]