Dr Ash Watson

Dr Ash Watson is a sociologist of technology and fiction. She works for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society at UNSW Sydney, in Centre's Health focus area and People program. She is also a member of the UNSW.ai institute. Her research draws on arts-based and qualitative methods to explore the socio-cultural impacts of emerging technologies and identify the kinds of futures that are opened or closed off by current trends. She is particularly interested in the visions and organisational principles of 'DIY' collectives, including startups and community archives.

Ash’s debut novel Into the Sea (2020), published in Brill's award-winning Social Fictions Series, is ‘an experiment in sociological imagination.’ Drawing on ethnographic research, the story follows a group of young adults through a year of the mundane and extraordinary to consider what it means to live 'the Australian way of life'. Her creative writing is published in various national literary magazines including Overland, SCUM mag, and Baby Teeth Journal, and she makes zines at Frances St Press.

In 2017, Ash launched the creative public sociology project So Fi Zine, an open-access publication for sociological fiction, poetry and visual art. The zine has published the work of hundreds of international authors, reached over 13,000 readers, and included guest editorials by field-leading scholars including Howard Becker, Ruha Benjamin, Raewyn Connell, Michael Burawoy, Les Back and more.

Since 2018, Ash has served as the invited inaugural Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review, heading the journal's short story series. She is also an Editorial Board member of the academic journal Qualitative Research and the literary journal Authora Australis. 

Prior to her current position she was an ARC-funded Postdoctoral Fellow on the Discovery Project "Living with Personal Data", working with Prof Deborah Lupton and Prof Mike Michael, based at the UNSW Vitalities Lab. During her doctoral studies she was awarded an Endeavour Research Fellowship which she undertook at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her PhD in Sociology was awarded by Griffith University in 2018.