Francesca Sobande is a writer and reader in digital media studies at Cardiff University. Her books include The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19 (SAGE, 2022), and Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture (University of California Press, 2024). She is also the co-author of Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2022), the free graphic novel, Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us (self-published, 2023), and the book, Look, Don’t Touch: Reflections on the Freedom to Feel (404 Ink, 2025). Francesca’s bylines include Disegno, Paste Magazine, Real Review, and The Vinyl Factory.

Her most recent work is the self-published zine, Black Life in / and “Alt” Music Subcultures (2025) – based on a project in collaboration with the Museum of Youth Culture and which also draws on collections from the DC Punk Archive.