Diversifying Drone Stories, 2021-2023

From its establishment as a now-iconic tool in global military arsenals, the drone increasingly features in domestic airspace. Yet, while it is frequently asserted that the domestic ‘drone age’ is with us, there remains a notable paucity of empirically-driven research exploring the impacts of the domestic drone on the lives increasingly subject to its gaze. Diversifying Drone Stories develops a novel mixed-methodology foregrounding those who deploy, design and live under drones. The project explores the use, perception, and impact of drones in changing UK airspace. The project engaged with diverse stakeholders (including emergency services, lawyers, industry, pilots and air traffic controllers, local authorities, and members of the public) through qualitative methods including focus groups, interviews, and directive setting (via the Mass Observation Archive), to understand different uses, experiences and perspectives on how drones may be (re)shaping UK airspace and everyday life.

The aim of Diversifying Drone Stories is to map and critically examine the domestic drone’s growing mediation, governance and securitisation of day-to-day life in the UK. The project pursues four objectives and four research questions:
Research objectives: (1) To advance drone scholarship and methodology through an engagement with feminist geopolitics; (2) To foster knowledge exchange and debate in/ across drone stakeholder communities on issues of drone security and harm; (3) To connect social scientists and policy-makers in order to influence policy; (4) To enable career development.
Research questions: (1) How are domestic drones employed in the securitisation of day-to day life? (2) How do domestic drones enable and manifest policing and governance from above? (3) How are airborne harms perceived, practiced, and experienced in the domestic drone age? (4) How do domestic drone practices and abuses impact understandings of airspace legalities?