PROF JULIAN THOMAS
Julian Thomas is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S Centre).
Julian is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University.
Prior to the commencement of the ADM+S Centre, he was Director of the Swinburne Institute for Social Research (2005-2016), and then Director of RMIT’s Social Change research platform. He also leads the team producing the Australian Digital Inclusion Index since 2015. His work ranges across the contemporary histories of new communications technologies, digital inequality and inclusion, and the internet and communication policy.
Recent publications include studies of automation in digital advertising, the history of mapping and navigation in autonomous vehicles, and recommendation systems in the book industry. His latest book is Wi-Fi (Polity 2021; with Ellie Rennie and Rowan Wilken). Other books include Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities (INC, 2016), The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015), and Fashioning Intellectual Property (Cambridge UP, 2012).
Julian was elected to the Council of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2017, is a Board member of the Australian Communications Consumers Action Network (ACCAN), and an Advisory Board member of Humanitech, an initiative of the Australian Red Cross.
