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Ash Watson

I am a Scientia Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. I research how people make sense of social and technological change.

A core concept in my work is sociological imagination, or how people understand the relationship between themselves and society. I examine how people imagine, sense, feel, and experience this relationship. I focus on feelings and senses —— often absent in academic work —— such as desire, hope, longing, memories, promise, secrecy, trust, need, what it’s like to be watched, what it’s like to be seen —— as these illuminate the ‘felt value’ of things and why we as a society follow certain socio-technical paths. I use this lens to understand the everyday impacts of emerging technologies like AI; the value of civic cultural institutions such as archives and libraries (including diy and alternative forms); new digital dimensions of health and wellbeing such as therapybots; and the sociological significance of fiction, futures and creativity. Overall, my research program focuses on how technologies, stories and social contexts shape people’s sense of belonging, wellbeing, and life possibilities.

I am an Affiliate of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). I have held a number of visiting positions: in 2025 with The University of Glasgow, in 2023 with the ESRC Centre for SocioDigital Futures at the University of Bristol, and in 2017 at Goldsmiths, University of London as a Doctoral Endeavour Research Fellow. I currently supervise doctoral candidates across sociology, STS, cultural studies and media/communications.

I am Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review‘s quarterly and the creator/editor of So Fi Zine — a twice-yearly publication for sociological fiction, poetry and visual art. I run the indie zine publisher and distro Frances Street Press. My debut novel Into the Sea was published by Brill in 2020. My PhD, awarded in 2018, examined the value of fiction for sociological imagination and public sociology.

My grants and publications are listed here.

Contact me via email at ashleigh.watson@unsw.edu.au. Subscribe for sociological fiction news via awtsn.substack.com.

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