Who We Are
Digital Cultures and Societies is a strategic funded initiative. If you would like to find out how you can connect with our work contact us at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au.
Executive
Associate Professor Nicholas Carah
Nic is the Director of Digital Cultures & Societies. Nic's role is to lead and manage DCS which will enable HASS researchers to play a key role in shaping research, conversations, ideas and policies about how digital technologies transform our cultures and societies. As the Director, Nic will facilitate the development of collaborative research projects, funding bids, high quality academic outputs, supporting HDR students and coordinating digital research training. Related to this goal, he will foster partnerships and research translation with industry, government, and cultural institutions. Nic will oversee the development of durable digital research infrastructure used by HASS researchers, enabling them to connect with larger university and national infrastructure in using cutting edge approaches to data collection, analysis, visualisation and storytelling.
Postdoctoral Research Fellows
Dr Andrea Alarcón
Andrea comes from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Andrea’s work examines power relationships in day-to-day uses of translational online communication. Andrea is working on a book emanating from their PhD work that examines the mobility, precariousness and power relationships of ‘outsourcing the home’ where Global North tech-workers maintain Global North wages while sitting, or traveling, through the Global South. With us at Digital Cultures and Societies Andrea will develop a project that extends from this work on remote virtual assistants.
Andrew Dougall is an International Relations researcher whose work deals with the relationship between communication media and international order. He is currently finalising a book project on media’s contribution to nationalist order challenges in 19th century Britain and the 21st century United States. The next phase of his work examines the politics of liberal ordering through the prism of labour-intensive digital mediation practices, such as content moderation and generative AI. Andrew is currently a post doctoral research fellow at Digital Cultures and Societies at the University of Queensland.
Luke Munn is a Research Fellow in Digital Cultures & Societies at the University of Queensland. His wide-ranging work investigates the sociocultural impacts of digital cultures, from data infrastructures in Asia to platform labor and far-right radicalisation, and has been featured in highly regarded journals such as Cultural Politics, Big Data & Society, and New Media & Society as well as popular forums like the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. He has written five books: Unmaking the Algorithm (2018), Logic of Feeling (2020), Automation is a Myth (2022), Countering the Cloud (2022), and Technical Territories (2023 forthcoming). His work combines diverse digital methods with critical analysis that draws on media, race, and cultural studies.
Dr Giselle Newton (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Digital Cultures and Societies. Giselle also holds an appointment as Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW, Sydney. Giselle is a social researcher of technology, health and family with a background in media studies, sociology and linguistics. Giselle's research agenda focuses on how developments in digital and bio- technologies facilitate the emergence of new identities, communities and family structures; shifts in knowledge practices and positionings; and changes in power dynamics particularly between laypeople, experts and institutions. Her primary research project at DCS is about ‘DNA datafication’ and explores attitudes towards and experiences of DNA testing in a Big Data era.
Giang Nguyen-Thu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Digital Cultures and Societies. She obtained her doctorate at UQ in 2016. In 2020, she returned to UQ as a postdoctoral fellow at IASH after several years working in Vietnam and the US. Her book Television in Post-Reform Vietnam: Nation, Media, Market (Routledge 2019) is the first monograph in the English language about contemporary Vietnamese media. Her current ethnographic project unpacks the plural temporalities of digital life in Vietnam to reveal how social hope and endurance are tangled in unexpected ways that challenge the taken-for-granted seamlessness of the digital.
Digital Research Training
Katy McHugh
Katy is the Senior Learning Deisgner within Digital Cultures and Societies in developing the Digital Research Training Program. Katy is instrumental to the establishment and launch of the centre through administration, event management and digital research training material creation. In her role she communicates with and manages course contributors, including academic staff, subject matter experts and other stakeholders.
Students
Maria-Gemma Brown
Maria-Gemma is a PhD candidate in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and the School of Communications and the Arts at the University of Queensland. She is also a research assistant with the Digital Cultures and Societies Hub UQ. Her research examines the capacities of digital technologies to capture, modulate, channel, and produce affect for capital extraction and accumulation.
Professional Team
Rachel is the Coordinator of Digital Cultures and Societies and the Senior Advisor (Research Management) in the HASS Faculty Research Office. In DCS, Rachel's role is to is to lead and manage the operations. As the Coordinator she works with Nic to develop and implement strategic and operational plans for Digital Cultures and Societies that are in line with requirements of UQ.