Dr Ash Watson is a sociologist who researches the social and cultural impacts of emerging technologies. She is a Scientia Fellow and Senior Lecturer with the Centre for Social Research in Health.

Her current projects examine how public cultural institutions such as libraries and archives support and shape how people make sense of technological change. She is interested in how these institutions facilitate access and foster forms of civic participation, inclusion and collective memory. She is also researching the impacts of Generative AI on people's relationships, belonging and wellbeing. Her research centres creative methodological innovations, using fiction and art to illuminate lived experiences of social change and to enable public conversations about digital futures and social justice.

Ash has held a number of visiting and affiliate positions including the University of Glasgow in 2025, the ESRC Centre for SocioDigital Futures at the University of Bristol in 2023, and Endeavour Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2017. Ash is Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review. She is an invited Editorial Board Member of Qualitative Research, Journal of Sociology, and DIY, Alternative Cultures & Society. Her debut novel Into the Sea was published by Brill in 2020. She runs the independent zine publisher Frances St Press and is the creator/editor of So Fi Zine, an open-access publication for experiments in social inquiry.