Associate Professor Adam Fish
Scientia Fellow (Level D)

Associate Professor Adam Fish

Arts,Design & Architecture
School of the Arts and Media

Adam Fish is a Scientia Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Arts and the Media, at the University of New South Wales. He is a cultural anthropologist, documentary video producer, and interdisciplinary scholar who works across social science, computer engineering, environmental science, and the visual arts. Dr. Fish employs ethnographic, participatory, and creative methods to examine the social, political, and ecological impacts of new technologies.

He has authored several books including: Hacker States (MIT 2020, with Luca Follis, Lancaster University, UK), about how state hacking impacts democracy; Technoliberalism (Palgrave Macmillan 2017), an ethnography of the politics of internet and television convergence in Hollywood and Silicon Valley; and After the Internet (Polity 2017, with Ramesh Srinivasan, UCLA, US), which reimagines the internet from the perspective of grassroots activists, citizens, and hackers on the margins of political and economic power. After the Internet was translated into Spanish in 2021. His most recent completed project was based on four years of collaboration with marine conservation drone operators across the world and resulted in a number of articles and the forthcoming book Oceaning: Governing Marine Life with Drones in 2024 with Duke University Press. Alongside this he is finishing a book on drone studies with Michael Richardson (UNSW) for MIT Press.

His current project focuses on how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples benefit from renewable energy industries accessing their lands.  

He is also interested in media studies of cosmology and the origins of life. This has necessitated investigating the role played by information in biology, physics, and computer science. 

Previous to joining UNSW in 2019, Dr. Fish was a Reader, Senior Lecturer, and Lecturer at Lancaster University in the Sociology department (2019-2012). At Lancaster University, Dr. Fish was awarded the grants listed below as well as a teaching award. In 2016, Lancaster University Vice Chancellor Professor Mark Smith awarded him with the university-wide Pilkington Teaching Award for his “innovative, energetic, and enthusiastic teaching and transformative effect it has had on Sociology’s undergraduate provision.”

From 2019-2018 he was a research fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society at the Technischen Universität Berlin, Germany investigating technological ethics, the internet of things, and drones.

In July 2018, he was a research fellow at Centre for Media, Communication, and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen, Germany.

From 2018-2017 he was a Leverhulme Research Fellow conducting research titled "Opening the Dronecode: The Privatisation of Urban Airspace," which had him working in the United Kingdom, the United States, Sri Lanka, and numerous locations in Indonesia on the political dimensions of atmospheric technologies such as drones.

From 2017-2015 he conducted geographical research into data centers and undersea cable landing infrastructure in the North Atlantic. This research resulted in a 2017 experimental drone documentary, Points of Presence, which has been screened at numerous conferences and film festivals on several continents. See the video here. This research was funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology, COST Action IS1202, and other sources.

From 2015-2013 he was a co-investigator on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant, "3DaROC: 3rd Party Dematerialisation and Rematerialisation of Capital," which analysed peer-to-peer and other forms of networked money lending.

From 2012-2009 he was a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles for the National Science Foundation funded project, “Public Engagement in Networked Virtual Organizations and its effects on Discovery and Innovation", which analysed and compared forms of amateur and citizen digital participatory culture.

From 2009-2005 he was a documentary producer producing 15 documentaries for US, UK, Irish, and Italian television on a range of issues including Iraqi refugees, divided cities such as Jerusalem, and religious conflicts in the Himalayan region of India. He co-produced the award-winning documentary The Refugees of Shangri-la (2014), about the relocation of refugees from Bhutan to the United States https://www.therefugeesofshangrila.com/.

From 2005-1996 he was an archaeologist working for the US federal government and Native American tribes to preserve the cultural heritage of Native Americans. He led archaeology excavations throughout the world include in the Mayan region of the Yucatan of Mexico for the University of California, Riverside; in the Anasazi region of the Southwest; and the Columbia and Snake River areas of the Pacific Northwest.

He has given invited talks and keynotes in Germany (X4), Sweden (X4), the United Kingdom (X3), Singapore, Finland, Malta, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Iceland (2015) and a visiting lecturer at Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland (2014-2015) and has held artist residencies in Finland and Greece.

He has a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles (2012), is from the Pacific Northwest of Native North America, and is not on social media.

When he is not researching, he enjoys basically any activity in open space, open water, or wilderness.

  • Books | 2021
    Books | 2020
    2020, Hacker States, MIT Press, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hacker-states
    Books | 2017
    2017, After the internet, Polity Press
    Books | 2017
    2017, Technoliberalism and the end of participatory culture in the United States, Palgrave Macmillan, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31256-9
  • Book Chapters | 2021
    2021, 'Participatory Cartography: Drones, Countermapping, and Technological Power', in The Handbook of Peer Production, pp. 185 - 196, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781119537151.ch14
    Book Chapters | 2020
    2020, 'Drones', in Vannini P (ed.), The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video, Routledge, pp. 247 - 255, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429196997
    Book Chapters | 2020
    2020, 'New Materialism of Hacker Cartography: Participatory Mapmaking and Technological Power', in Handbook of Peer Production, Wiley
    Book Chapters | 2019
    2019, 'Drones: Visual Anthropology from the Air', in Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video, Routledge
    Book Chapters | 2018
    2018, 'Scalia.warhead1, Operation Last Resort, and the Video Discourse of Warfare', in Vuori J; Saugmann R (ed.), Visual security studies, Routledge
    Book Chapters | 2018
    2018, 'Scalia.warhead1: Securitization discourses in hacktivist video', in Visual Security Studies: Sights and Spectacles of Insecurity and War, pp. 23 - 37, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315387581-2
    Book Chapters | 2016
    2016, 'Archaeology as activism', in Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One, pp. 203 - 206, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315425771-32
    Book Chapters | 2015
    2015, 'The moral technical imaginaries of internet convergence in an American television network', in Fraysse O; Neil MO (ed.), Digital labour and prosumer capitalism, Palgrave Macmillan
    Book Chapters | 2008
    2008, 'An Interview with Adeline Fredin, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Colville Confederated Tribes', in Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One, University of British Columbia Press (UBC Press)
    Book Chapters | 2008
    2008, 'An Interview with Connie Johnston, Colville Tribal Elder, Colville Confederated Tribes', in Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One, University of British Columbia Press (UBC Press)
    Book Chapters | 2008
    2008, 'An Interview with Joe Pakootas, Tribal Chairman, Colville Confederated Tribes', in Heather B; Smith C; Lippert D; Watkins J; Zimmerman L (ed.), Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One, University of British Columbia Press (UBC Press)
    Book Chapters | 2008
    2008, 'An Interview with Mary Marchand, Colville Tribal Elder', in Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One, University of British Columbia Press (UBC Press)
    Book Chapters | 2008
    2008, 'Archaeology as Activism in a Post-Kennewick Man World', in Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One, University of British Columbia Press (UBC Press)
    Book Chapters | 2003
    2003, 'The women of Afghanistan and the freedom of thought', in Krippner S; McIntyre T (ed.), The psychological impact of war trauma on civilians, Praeger
  • Journal articles | 2023
    2023, 'Technoliberalism and the Complementary Relationships between Humanitarian, Conservation, and Entrepreneurial Dronework in Indonesia', Convergence, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13548565231161254
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'Blue governmentality: Elemental activism with conservation technologies on plundered seas', Political Geography, 93, pp. 102528 - 102528, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102528
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'Degenerate ecocinema: indexing entropy with drones', Visual Studies, 37, pp. 194 - 204, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2022.2090127
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'Drone Power: Conservation, Humanitarianism, Policing and War', Theory, Culture and Society, 39, pp. 3 - 26, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/02632764211022828
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'Reforesting Native America with Drones: Rooting Carbon with Arborescent Governmentality and Decolonial Geoengineering', Theory, Culture and Society, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/02632764221096815
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'Saildrones and Snotbots in the Blue Anthropocene: Sensing technologies, multispecies intimacies, and scientific storying', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 40, pp. 862 - 880, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/02637758221126526
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'State hacking at the edge of code, capitalism and culture', Information Communication and Society, 25, pp. 242 - 257, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1776368
    Journal articles | 2021
    2021, 'Crash Theory: Entrapments of Conservation Drones and Endangered Megafauna', Science Technology and Human Values, 46, pp. 425 - 451, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0162243920920356
    Journal articles | 2020
    2020, 'Balloons', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
    Journal articles | 2020
    2020, 'Technoliberalism in Iceland: The fog of information infrastructure', Canadian Journal of Communication, 45, pp. 143 - 156, http://dx.doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2020v45n513463
    Journal articles | 2019
    Journal articles | 2019
    2019, 'Resurrection from Bunkers and Data Centers', Culture Machine, 18, https://culturemachine.net/vol-18-the-nature-of-data-centers/resurrection-from-bunkers/
    Journal articles | 2019
    2019, 'The financialization of peer-to-peer lending in the United Kingdom', Communicative Figurations, 27, https://www.kommunikative-figurationen.de/en/news/new-working-paper-the-financialization-of-peer-to-peer-lending-in-the-united-kingdom/
    Journal articles | 2018
    2018, 'Points of Presence', Screenworks, 8
    Journal articles | 2017
    2017, 'Beneath the Clouds, the Beach', Cultural Anthropology
    Journal articles | 2017
    2017, 'Drones Caught in the Net', Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Images Studies, 8, http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.LD.8.2.8
    Journal articles | 2017
    2017, 'Extended Flight: The Emergence of Drone Sovereignty', InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=73ba488f-8657-4345-bb9d-1f4aca1c435c%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=127115860&db=vth
    Journal articles | 2017
    2017, 'Half-Lives of Hackers and the Shelf Life of Hacks', Limn, https://limn.it/articles/half-lives-of-hackers-and-the-shelf-life-of-hacks/
    Journal articles | 2017
    2017, 'Technology retreats and the politics of social media', tripleC: Communication, Capitalism and Critique, 15, pp. 355 - 369, http://dx.doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v15i1.807
    Journal articles | 2016
    2016, 'Drone Sense', UnMediated, 1, pp. 73 - 76, http://unmediatedjournal.com/issues/
    Journal articles | 2016
    2016, 'Gagged and doxed: Hacktivism’s self-incrimination complex', International Journal of Communication, 10, pp. 3281 - 3300
    Journal articles | 2016
    2016, 'Networked idiots: affective economies and neoliberal subjectivity in Russian viral video', Global Media and Communication, 12, pp. 143 - 159, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1742766516652165
    Journal articles | 2016
    2016, 'Zopa’s lambs: video ads, internet banks, and the financialization of affect', Ephemera : Theory and Politics in Organization, 16, pp. 33 - 49, http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/zopa%E2%80%99s-lambs-video-ads-internet-investment-and-financialization-affect
    Journal articles | 2015
    2015, 'Edgework, state power, and hacktivists', Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5, pp. 383 - 390, http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.022
    Journal articles | 2015
    2015, 'Mirroring the videos of Anonymous: cloud activism, living networks, and political mimesis', The Fibreculture Journal, 26, pp. 85 - 107, http://dx.doi.org/10.15307/fcj.26.191.2015
    Journal articles | 2014
    2014, 'Participations: Dialogues on the participatory promise of contemporary culture and politics part two: Labour', International Journal of Communication, 8, pp. 1089 - 1106
    Journal articles | 2014
    2014, 'Participations: dialogues on the participatory promise of contemporary culture and politics', International Journal of Communication, 8, pp. 1089–1106 - 1089–1106
    Journal articles | 2013
    2013, 'Participatory television: convergence, crowdsourcing, and neoliberalism', Communication, Culture and Critique, 6, pp. 372 - 395, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12016
    Journal articles | 2012
    2012, 'Digital labor is the new killer app', New Media and Society, 14, pp. 137 - 152, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444811412159
    Journal articles | 2011
    2011, 'Birds of the internet: a field guide to understanding action, organization, and the governance of participation', Journal of Cultural Economy, 4, pp. 157 - 187, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2011.563069
    Journal articles | 2011
    2011, 'Digital Labor in Participatory Television', in media res
    Journal articles | 2011
    2011, 'Film and Archaeology in the Indigenous and Industrial American West', Visual Anthropology, 24, pp. 246 - 265, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2010.508938
    Journal articles | 2011
    2011, 'Indigenous Digital Media and the History of the Internet on the Columbia Plateau', Journal of Northwest Anthropology, 45, pp. 91 - 114
    Journal articles | 2011
    2011, 'Revolutionary tactics, media ecologies, and repressive regimes', Public Culture, 23, pp. 505 - 510, http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/08992363-1336381
    Journal articles | 2011
    2011, 'The place of the internet in anthropology', Anthropology News, 52, pp. 17 - 17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-3502.2011.52317.x
    Journal articles | 2009
    2009, 'Internet Authorship: Social and Political Implications within Kyrgyzstan', Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14, pp. 559 - 580, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01453.x
    Journal articles | 2009
    2009, 'Multi-sited anthropology and new media journalism', Anthropology News, 50, pp. 27 - 27, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-3502.2009.50727.x
    Journal articles | 2009
    2009, 'Net sightings & world wide wonders: Cool tools that help you work smarter not harder', Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives Bulletin, pp. 3 - 9
    Journal articles | 2009
    2009, 'World of wonder: a documentary of a production subculture', Mediascape, Fall
    Journal articles | 2007
    2007, 'A Preliminary Study on English and Welsh “Sacred Sites” and Home Dream Reports', Anthropology of Consciousness, 18, pp. 2 - 28, http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ac.2007.18.2.2
    Journal articles | 2007
    2007, 'Mining difference for the culture industry: both Borat and anthropologists do it', Anthropology News, 48, pp. 6 - 7, http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/an.2007.48.1.6
    Journal articles | 2007
    2007, 'Sex, media, celebrity: a queer culture of media production', FlowTV, 5
    Journal articles | 2007
    2007, 'Support Media Anthropology and New Media', Anthropology News, 48, pp. 22 - 22, http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/an.2007.48.1.22
    Journal articles | 2007
    2007, 'Television, ecotourism, and the videocamera: performative non-fiction and auto-cinematography', FlowTV, 5
    Journal articles | 2006
    2006, 'Anthropologists responding to anthropological television', Anthropology Today, 22, pp. 22 - 25, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2006.00452.x
    Journal articles | 2006
    2006, 'Indigenous Bodies in Colonial Courts: Anthropological Science and the (Physical) Law of the Remaining Human', Wicazo Sa Review, 21, pp. 77 - 95
    Journal articles | 2005
    2005, 'Native American sacred places and the language of capitalism', Future Anterior, 2, pp. 40 - 49
    Journal articles | 2003
    2003, 'The Use of the Strauch Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and Wales', Dreaming, 13, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1023302209103
  • Creative Works (non-textual) | 2019
    2019, Arca Project
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2019
    2019, Points of Presence
    Recorded / Rendered Creative Works | 2018
    2018, Points of Presence, Screenworks.org.uk, Published: 01 June 2018, Duration: 00:18:46, Recorded / Rendered Creative Works, http://screenworks.org.uk/archive/digital-ecologies-and-the-anthropocene/points-of-presence
    Conference Papers | 2017
    2017, 'Edges of Digital Connectivity', pp. 1 - 5
    Reports | 2016
    2016, Study on comprehensive policy review of anti-trafficking projects funded by the European Commission, Publications Office of the European Union, https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/publications/comprehensive-policy-review-anti-trafficking-projects_en
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2015
    Fish AR, 2015, Mirror, Well Red, Robin Gibson Gallery, 278 Liverpool Street Darlinghurst NSW 2010 Australia, 27 June 2015 - 22 July 2015, medium: oil and enamel on polyester
    Conference Papers | 2015
    2015, 'A computational study of how and why reddit.com was an effective platform in the campaign against SOPA', in Meiselwitz G (ed.), Springer, pp. 229 - 241, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20367-6_23
    Conference Papers | 2015
    2015, 'Digital financial innovation: design rhetorics, spatiality, and the challenge of creating community', Vancouver, presented at Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Vancouver, 14 March 2015 - 15 March 2015, https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group_subpage.php?id=5705
    Reports | 2015
    2015, Internet parties: the internet as party, policy, platform, and persuasive symbol, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/73056/
    Reports | 2014
    2014, Deploying, innovating, and disrupting—designing digital infrastructures for alternative financial systems: digital intermediary exchange ‘toolkit’, 3rd Party Dematerialisation and Rematerialisation of Capital
    Reports | 2014
    2014, Interpreting infrastructure: defining user value for digital financial intermediaries, 3rd Party Dematerialisation and Rematerialisation of Capital
    Reports | 2014
    2014, Managing digital intermediaries: socio-digital analysis of the design of internet-based social, peer-to-peer financial services, 3rd Party Dematerialisation and Rematerialisation of Capital
    Reports | 2014
    2014, Participatory design of digital intermediaries, 3rd Party Dematerialisation and Rematerialisation of Capital
    Reports | 2014
    2014, Putting the ‘digital’ in Digital Intermediaries: the role of technical infrastructure in building business models, 3rd Party Dematerialisation and Rematerialisation of Capital
    Conference Papers |
    'Governance of labor in digital video networks'
    Creative Works (non-textual) |
    7th Annual Screening Scholarship Media Festival–Points of Presence
    Creative Works (non-textual) |
    Invited talk and performance at Green Film Festival, St Andrews University, Scotland
    Creative Works (non-textual) |
    Unfix Festival, Glasgow, Scotland screening of Points of Presence
    Creative Works (non-textual) |
    “Internet Freedom” and policy beta: a short documentary on the UK Pirate Party’s policy crowdsourcing platform