Research area & interests

Hello world! I am an interdisciplinary social scientist, and my current research interests cover many aspects of the digital and biosocial. Key areas include digitally-enabled knowledge production for conservation, online environmental participation/citizenship, and technological mediations between humans and wildlife. I am also deeply interested in inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary research concepts and practices; and develop and deliver courses on interdisciplinary research practice.

I currently hold a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and use digital ethnographic methods to think about what it means to be an environmental citizen and human in the Digital Anthropocene. The next project I am developing is on the unequal experiences of an overheating world. Previously, I conducted an ethnography of interdisciplinary knowledge production in newer models of university-business collaborations.

When not being a social scientist, I can be found outdoors looking for birds and bugs. The nature blog I co-write is Winging It. In 2017, I started the BAME network at Newcastle University and have since become involved in navigating multiple race and ethnicity-based issues. Separately, I am involved in housing activism at a grassroots level, working around housing inequalities arising from shared ownership and leasehold models, and more urgently, toward the #EndOurCladdingScandal campaign.

Formal education

• PhD in Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen; affiliated with dot.rural RCUK Digital Economy Hub and The James Hutton Institute (Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences group)
• Master’s in Sociology (M. Soc. Sci.), National University of Singapore
• Bachelor’s (first class honours) in Sociology (B. Soc. Sci. Hons), National University of Singapore

Contact email: audrey(dot)vermajames(at)gmail(dot)com