about

Research area & interests

Hello world! I am an unruly social scientist and ethnographer, and my current research interests include online environmental participation, hope in the anthropocene, and technological mediations between humans and wildlife. I am also deeply interested in inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary research knowledge production, concepts and practices; and develop and deliver courses on interdisciplinary research practice.

I am currently a Lecturer in Sociology at Newcastle University, UK. I previously held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship where I used ethnographic methods to think about what it means to be human in the Digital Anthropocene. The next project I am developing is on the mundane, unequal barriers to living in 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 looking for birds and bugs, or joined at the hip with the prettiest pup there ever was. The nature blog I co-wrote (much less now) is Winging It. In 2017, I started the BAME network at Newcastle University and have since become involved in navigating, writing and speaking on multiple race, precarity and casualisation in UKHE. 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

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