Francesca Sobande is a writer and Reader in Digital Media Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (Cardiff University), who spends time dreaming and embracing all things emo. She is the author of Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture (2024, University of California Press), Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19 (2022, SAGE), and The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (2020, Palgrave Macmillan). Her most recent books are Look, Don’t Touch: Reflections on the Freedom to Feel (2025, 404 Ink), co-authored with layla-roxanne hill, and a free self-published zine (2025), Black Life in/and “Alt” Music/Subcultures.

Francesca’s bylines include Disegno, Paste Magazine, Real Review, and The Vinyl Factory. She is co-author with layla-roxanne hill of Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (2022, Bloomsbury) and the free graphic novel Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us (2023, ESRC/AHRC funded), illustrated by Chris Manson, translated in Scots by Lesley Benzie, and translated in Scottish Gaelic by Naomi Gessesse. An accompanying Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us animation, co-created with Leeds Animation Workshop, features music by Nathan Somevi.

Francesca is also co-editor with Akwugo Emejulu of To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (2019, Pluto Press) and is co-author with Anamik Saha and Gavan Titley of The Anti-Racist Media Manifesto (2024, Polity). Previously, Francesca worked in communications in higher education, the arts, and not-for-profit sector. Her writing has been published in a wide range of international journals and she enjoys writing in Margins.