Jessica Megarry is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Geoprivacy, based in the Digital Media Research Centre and the QUT Design Lab. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Melbourne (2019), and she is currently working on the ARC Discovery project Digital Media, Location Awareness and the Politics of Geodata, led by Peta Mitchell, Marcus Foth and Markus Rittenbruch.
Jessica’s research examines the politics of technology with a focus on gender (in)equality. In her doctoral research, she analysed the ethics and communication practices of the Women’s Liberation Movement in order to provide a historical reference point for the digital feminism of today. Jessica is driven to understand how enduring logics of oppression manifest through technology development and shape everyday gendered lives. She has particular expertise in the areas of digital politics and surveillance, gendered power relations and violence against women, and feminist political communication. You can find her research in journals including Feminist Media Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, and the Journal of Lesbian Studies. Her book, The Limitations of Social Media Feminism: No Space of Our Own, is available from Palgrave Macmillan.
In her previous employment, Jessica was a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Melbourne, where she taught Politics and the Media, Australian Politics and Communicating Social Science Research. She has also worked as a Teaching Associate at Monash University, Victoria University and Swinburne Online, as well as a Research Associate on projects investigating care work in the gig economy, Australian print media history, and comfort women in Japanese-occupied New Guinea.