I’m Ashleigh, a sociologist and writer interested in fiction, social theory, creative research methods and speculative design. I’m a Resident Adjunct Research Fellow with the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and a Research Assistant at UNSW. I also teach social research methods at the University of Sydney.

My PhD was awarded in 2018. I completed my research at Griffith University. During my candidature I was a 2017 Endeavour Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. My innovative ethnographic and arts-based research explored sociological imagination, neoliberal individualism, Spinozan relationality, and cultural processes of meaning-making. As part of this project I completed a sociological fiction novel with the working title Into the Sea.

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, and Pink Cover Zine.

Tweet me at @awtsn or email a.watson@griffith.edu.au