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).

Francesca’s writing has been published in a wide range of international journals, including Communication, Culture and Critique, Consumption Markets and Culture, European Journal of Cultural Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Journal of Consumer Research, The Sociological Review, and Marketing Theory. She has also written for Disegno, Paste Magazine, Real Review, The Skinny, and The Vinyl Factory.

Francesca is co-author with layla-roxanne hill of Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (2022, Bloomsbury) and the freely available 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 previously worked in communications in higher education, the arts, and not-for-profit sector. She enjoys writing in Margins.