Dr Zeena Feldman’s research explores intersections between digital communication technologies and everyday life.

Her work is especially interested in how digital technologies impact understandings and performances of traditionally analogue concepts – for instance, belonging, identity, wellbeing and power. She currently runs the Quitting Social Media project, which explores digital detox and disconnection.

Zeena has published widely, including in Information, Communication & Society; the European Journal of Cultural Studies; Feminist Media Studies; the Journal of Gender Studies; Convergence; Celebrity Studies; and TripleC.

She has also written for The Independent, OpenDemocracy and The Conversation. She is the editor of Art & the Politics of Visibility (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2017) and co-editor with Deborah Lupton of Digital Food Cultures (Routledge, 2020).

Her monograph, Belonging in the Sharing Economy, is due out later this year. Zeena enjoys speaking with journalists about her work, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and other events around the world.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Digital detox and disconnection
• Sexuality, gender and the digital
• Online communities
• Work and labour in the digital age
• Wellbeing and the digital
• Belonging and identity
• Digital food cultures

Zeena is not currently accepting new PhD applications.

Teaching

Zeena Feldman teaches on the Department of Digital Humanities' postgraduate programmes. She is interested in critical approaches to social media and smartphone use and other digitally-mediated practices. 

Expertise and public engagement

Expertise:

• Digital detox and disconnection
• Mental health, wellbeing and self-care apps
• LGBTQ+ digital cultures
• Online conflict
• Digital food cultures
• Belonging and identity
• The sharing economy
• Work and labour in the digital economy

Recent media coverage:

• The Economist, ‘Addicted to your phone? Try “bricking” it’, 15 February 2026. Available at https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/02/15/addicted-to-your-phone-try-bricking-it.
• Polyester Zine, ‘From Echo Chamber to Individualism: Why Social Platforms No Longer Serve Us’, 29 September 2025. Available at https://www.polyesterzine.com/features/from-echo-chamber-to-individualism-why-social-platforms-no-longer-serve-us.
• Dazed, ‘Is the digital detox industry a scam?’, 24 January 2025. Available at https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/65921/1/is-the-digital-detox-industry-a-scam-phones-social-media.
• The Guardian, ‘How does it feel to live without a smartphone? ‘Almost spiritual’’, 11 August 2023. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/12/how-does-it-feel-to-live-without-a-smartphone-almost-spiritual.