Media & Cultural Studies
About
Media are everywhere but not the expertise to understand them. To understand media, we centre critique – of culture, power, representation, and technologies.
Our approach to media and cultural studies research is interventionist: we believe critical and engaged research shapes the world for the better. Our work is imbued with politics and grounded in the media practices, policies, and technologies that shape and are shaped by culture. That’s why we foreground justice (social justice, media justice, data justice, environmental justice, and more), across our work, whether we’re researching community media in Australia, the global cultural and political implications of new technologies, climate crisis, or anti-racism.
Our work is forward looking and historically informed, traversing local and global concerns in order to generate critical tools for more just futures. At the intersection of the humanities and social sciences, our researchers examine how media and culture both shape, and are shaped by, technologies, economies, politics, power, race, gender, sexuality, and disability. Our work speaks to diverse audiences, from critical scholars to media practitioners to policy makers. This diversity is reflected in the breadth of our scholarly and creative research outputs, from books, essays and reports, to exhibitions, performances, radio, installations, experimental media, and films.
Collaboration is at the core of what we do – with communities, organisations, researchers, and one another. If you want to collaborate with us, we’re keen to hear from you about how we can work together to do the research needed for a more just world.
Our people
Higher Degree Research
We welcome Higher Degree Researchers who want to do critical, creative, and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of media and cultural studies. We are excited by projects that foreground themes like critical race, disability, gender and sexuality, climate crisis, critical studies of technologies old and new , and questions of social, media, environmental, and data justice in all their forms. With a collaborative and inclusive research community, we aim to build strong supervision teams and supervisory relationships. We believe our role is to train future researchers to do transformative work, as well as guide the writing of an outstanding thesis. If you want to work with us, reach out to individual researchers that align with your interests because we’d love to hear from you.
Research contributors
Media Futures Hub
The Media Futures Hub brings together UNSW scholars investigating justice, media, and emerging technologies. Our work spans First Nations and community media, autonomous systems, data justice and more, using innovative, interventionist methods to help build more just futures.
Automated Decision Making + Society
Automated systems now shape decisions across every level of society, and the ADM+S Centre brings together expertise from the humanities, social sciences, and technological fields to understand their impacts. SAM researchers contribute a critical media and cultural studies perspective, examining everything from environmental data stewardship to shifting notions of authenticity in the age of generative AI.
Contact us
If you'd like to engage with us, including working with us on your PhD or other Higher Degree Research programs, please contact individual staff members following the links above.