ADM+S Affiliate Dr Christopher O’Neill awarded prestigious Fulbright Scholarship
Author Natalie Campbell
Date 3 March 2025
ADM+S Affiliate Dr Christopher O’Neill, who recently completed a Research Fellowship with Prof Mark Andrejevic at the Monash University node of ADM+S has been awarded a 2025-2026 Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Southern California.
Commemorating the achievement at Parliament House in Canberra on 27 February, Dr O’Neill was presented his Fulbright Scholarship from the Governor General, Sam Mostyn.
Dr O’Neill will spend four months working with Assoc Prof Mike Ananny, Associate Professor of Communication and Journalism at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, studying automation, work and error.
The Fulbright Program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind, created by US Senator J. William Fulbright and the US Government in 1946, and is the flagship foreign exchange scholarship program of the United States.
Successful Fulbright recipients are interviewed and selected by panels of experts from academia, government, professional organisations and the U.S. Embassy in a competitive process which assesses academic and professional merit, a strong program proposal with defined potential outcomes, and ambassadorial skills.
Dr O’Neill is currently a Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute, where his work draws upon science and technology studies and critical media theory to study the place of automation in contemporary biopower.
Prior to his role at Deakin, he spent three years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with ADM+S Chief Investigator Prof Mark Andrejevic at the Monash University node of ADM+S, where among other projects, he developed a critical analysis of the role of the human in automated work and surveillance systems.
ADM+S Prof Mark Andrejevic said, “Chris did amazing work during his time at the Centre, and It’s great to see his well-deserved success in the Fulbright Program and beyond.
“I know he will make the most of the opportunity and this will continue to build his burgeoning international reputation.”
Notably, an international workshop he co-organised alongside fellow ADM+S member Lauren Kelly has led to a forthcoming special issue of Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation on ‘new worlds of logistical labour’.
Dr O’Neill has also appeared as a public commentator on recent industrial relations issues regarding the place of automation and surveillance in warehouse work.
“Having the opportunity to develop my work on labour and automation at the ADM+S Centre has led to me receiving a Fulbright Scholar Award,” says Dr O’Neill.
“The opportunity that’s been given early career researchers s at ADM+S is astounding. You have an incredible amount of freedom and encouragement to develop your own path as a researcher.
“I made so many connections with talented and brilliant researchers from all over Australia, but also with international networks that the Centre opened me up to.”
In 2022 Dr O’Neill received support from ADM+S to take part in a two-month AI and Humanity Research Cluster at the University of Southern California in Berkley, collaborating with researchers from across America.
“During that experience, I made lots of new relationships with American researchers, and I’ve subsequently organized workshops and streams of international conferences in collaboration with those colleagues.”
Dr O’Neill will commence his exchange in August 2025, where he will work with Associate Prof Ananny in the Media as SocioTechnical Systems (MASTS) research group, studying the way that errors in automated systems can reveal the dynamics and assumptions which are sometimes hidden within automated work infrastructures.
