Dr Francesca Sobande is a writer and reader who researches the power and politics of media and the marketplace. Her work focuses on digital remix culture and music, Black diaspora(s) and archives, Black feminism and pop culture, nostalgia and subcultures, creative work and education, branding and crises, and the internet and cultural memory.
RECENT BOOKs and co-creations
Francesca is Reader in Digital Media Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (Cardiff University). She is author of Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture (University of California Press, 2024), Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19 (SAGE, 2022), and The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Her teaching focuses on critical and creative approaches to media, music, and meme culture.
Francesca is co-author with layla-roxanne hill of Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2022) and the free graphic novel Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us (ESRC/AHRC funded, 2023), illustrated by Chris Manson and translated in Scots (by Lesley Benzie) and Scottish Gaelic (by Naomi Gessesse). A related animation, co-created with Leeds Animation Workshop, features music by Nathan Somevi. Forthcoming work by layla-roxanne and Francesca includes the book Look, Don’t Touch: Reflections on the Freedom to Feel (404 Ink, 2025). Francesca is also co-editor with Akwugo Emejulu of To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (Pluto Press, 2019), and co-author with Anamik Saha and Gavan Titley of The Anti-Racist Media Manifesto (Polity, 2024).
Previously, Francesca worked in communications in higher education, the arts, and non-profit sector. Her forthcoming work focuses on internet imaginaries and pop culture portrayals of “alternative” music. Francesca’s bylines include Disegno, Paste Magazine, Real Review, and The Vinyl Factory. She enjoys writing in Margins.