Hello.

I’m Ash, a sociologist and writer.

I’m a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Vitalities Lab at UNSW, Sydney. My research explores digital data, futures and creative research methods. I’m also interested in fiction, social theory, and speculative design.

My PhD was awarded by Griffith University in 2018. During my candidature I was a 2017 Endeavour Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. My innovative ethnographic and arts-based research drew on fiction and Spinoza to explore sociological imagination, neoliberal individualism and cultural processes of meaning-making.

I am the creator and editor of So Fi Zine, and the Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review. I also established and run Frances St Press, an independent online publishing platform for arts and social science cross-disciplinary inquiry. I’m the elected Secretary (2019-2020) for The Australian Sociological Association. You can find my writing in Overland, Bareknuckle Poet, SCUM, BrainDrip and more.

Tweet me at @awtsn or email ashleigh.watson@unsw.edu.au.