Professor Meredith Jones
Professor / Director of Research Institute - (ICS)

Summary

Professor Jones is Director of the pan-university Institute for Communities and Society. 

Meredith is a transdisciplinary scholar who works at the intersections of feminist theories of the body with media, gender, and cultural studies. She is particularly interested in popular culture, visuality, and embodiment, and has published widely in these areas. Her latest edited volume, Performing the Penis: Phalluses in 21st Century Cultures (with Evelyn Callahan) comprehensively introduces the emerging discipline of Penis Studies. She is currently working on a monograph about vulvas and on a yearbook about genital transformations in media and culture. 

Beautyscapes: Mapping Cosmetic Surgery Tourism (written with Ruth Holliday and David Bell) won the 2020 Foundation for Sociology of Health and Illness Prize. This book is based on extensive fieldwork carried out in Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Tunisia, Spain, and Czech Republic. It also comprises digital research into cosmetic surgery websites and cosmetic surgery communities on social media. 

Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery, Meredith's first monograph, is a widely-cited foundational text in studies of makeover culture, cosmetic surgery and feminist theories of the body. Her other books include a major collection of feminist writing about cosmetic surgery that she co-edited with philosopher Cressida Heyes, Cosmetic Surgery: A Feminist Primer. 

She often speaks publicly about social media, popular culture and feminism, and is an expert on the socio-cultural aspects of the Kardashians. She hosted a scholarly Kimposium! in 2015 and Kimposium! The Sequel was held in September 2021. Meredith is active in the creative industries and founded the Trunk series of books with artist and designer Suzanne Boccalatte, which includes curated collections of artworks and essays about Hair and Blood. Currently she is collaborating with Taylor & Francis Group to deliver a series of projects around new and innovative modes of publishing. The goal is to develop more digitally relevant, flexible, inclusive and faster ways of publishing for academics as well as community, industry, and NGO groups.

Qualifications

• PhD in Cultural Studies, University of Western Sydney, 2006
• BA Hons. in Women's Studies, 1st Class, University of Sydney, 1998

Responsibility