Dr Ash Watson

Dr Ash Watson is a sociologist and Scientia Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney. Her research examines the social and cultural impacts of emerging digital technologies in various contexts including healthcare, crises, art/culture and everyday life. She is interested in how people understand, feel and experience digital change; the sociotechnical dimensions of belonging, wellbeing and inclusion in society; and the promissory discourses of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Conceptually, her work engages with affect theory, queer theory and practice, more-than-human theory and sociomaterial approaches to expectation, knowledge/sense, narratives and futures. Ash has an international profile for her innovative methodological work which unites qualitative, creative and digital sociological methods. She is Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review and an Editorial Board Member of Qualitative Research. 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.