Dr Natasha Zeng is a Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture in the Department of Digital Humanities. Her research broadly explores the cultural politics of digital and popular culture, with a particular focus on race and racialisation. Attuned to the everyday and the embodied, her work challenges linear understandings of the relationship between media and audiences. Instead, she situates media within the textures and spatio-temporalities of daily life, tracing how feelings of attachment, belonging and identification circulate and take shape.

She completed her PhD in Media Studies from the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University (awarded 2024), which explored how Asian Australian youth undergo racialisation, and how race is lived and produced as such in online cultures. She has contributed as a Research Associate to several major projects, most recently on Dr Akane Kanai’s study of young women’s online engagements with feminism.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Race and racialisation
• Inequalities in identity and online culture
• Feminist media studies
• Youth studies
• Affect and embodiment

Teaching

Natasha Zeng’s research focus on young people and the inequalities and diversity of identity and online culture informs her responsive and reflexing teaching practice. She has extensive experience working with diverse student cohorts across Australia and the UK, and a strong track record in designing and delivering teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in media and digital humanities. Her approach is guided by feminist ethics of collegiality, empathy and care, and she is deeply committed to inclusive pedagogy.

Email Dr Natasha Zeng to book office hours.