Academic, activist and empirical scholar: the legacy of Thomas Mathiesen

Getting an overview of and taking in the career of Thomas Mathiesen (1933Mathiesen ( -2021) ) is a daunting experience for any scholar and any citizen with a basic sense of civic responsibility.He studied sociology at the University of Wisconsin 1953-55, defended his now famous doctoral thesis, The Defences of the Weak, at the University of Oslo in 1965, established the Norwegian Association for Penal Reform (KROM) in 1968, became a professor in sociology of law in 1972 and an honorary professor at Lund University in 2003, produced countless books and articles on a wide variety of topics, obtained numerous prizes, and had his books translated into, for example, Swedish, Danish, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Serbian and Chinese.First and foremost, he remained, throughout his career, an open-minded, intellectually curious, hard-working scholar with a keen interest not only in research and academic theories, but also in their practical implementation in the world around him.He was well and truly a researcher who always seemed to have an eye for practice and a drive to reform the institutions of our societies.Not only does his continuous display of civic engagement bear witness to this; the way in which he undertook and executed academic projects also reveals this quality.This special issue is dedicated to Thomas Mathiesen and his incredible work and research.In the following, we will briefly describe some of Thomas Mathiesen's many noteworthy contributions to surveillance studies in particular, but also to the study of prisons, punishment and the penal realm.Subsequently, we will introduce the articles and interventions of this issue.Finally, we will briefly address some of the key qualities of Thomas Mathiesen's work, which we hope and believe will continue to inspire current and future scholars. Surveillance and resistanceThomas Mathiesen was a pioneer in identifying and conceptualising emerging trends related to surveillance, counter-surveillance and resistance: how the police weaponised new technology; the ways in which exceptional measures and mitigations against terror were 'normalised' and became part of everyday policing; the turn towards crisis management; and not least 'the rise of the surveillant state in times of globalization'