Dr Eveline Lubbers

Profile

Eveline Lubbers has been a senior research fellow with the Tobacco Control Research Group since early 2011, sharing the job with Andy Rowell. Together they developed TobaccoTactics.org as a cutting-edge model of monitoring the tobacco industry, launched in June 2012. A wiki-based database as a model of knowledge exchange was a first for the University of Bath. Results of the Group’s research found their way to health advocates and journalists working on the issue since.

Before moving to academia, Lubbers and Rowell had careers in investigative reporting with a focus on corporate power and influence. They therefore bring extensive knowledge of how corporations operate and a range of different writing and investigative skills, which is extremely useful for the TobaccoTactics project. Their shared experience on researching transnational corporations is a continuing source of inspiration exploring new routes of research and dissemination of evidence.

The exposure of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy in the environmental direct action movement revealed how the state monitors political campaigns. The research of Eveline Lubbers reported in her book ‘Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark’, examines a related grave threat to our political freedoms – undercover activities by corporations. Based on exclusive access to previously confidential sources, this research shows how companies such as Nestlé, Shell and McDonald’s use covert methods to gather intelligence on activist groups, counter criticism of their strategies and practices, and evade accountability. Corporate intelligence gathering has shifted from being reactive to proactive, with important implications for democracy itself. Cooperation between the government and corporate intelligence in such secret operations is a seriously neglected field of research.

"My research into intelligence and activism addresses the ways large corporations seek to manage and manipulate public protest. And it shows the informal dimension of information gathering hidden behind the politics and practices of public relation and reputation management.

Corporate and police spying on activists undermines democracy presents the key findings and a summary of the case studies. This brief for the Policy Research Institute also addresses the need for further research in order to develop the subject of what I propose to call ‘activist intelligence’."
 

Research interests

• Tobacco industry political activity
• Corporate and police spying on activists
• Online monitoring

Publications

Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark, corporate and police spying on activists (Pluto Press, 2012)