TASA 2025 Conference Postgrad Bursary: Topham
Posted By:
Justine E Topham
Posted On: 2026-02-03T02:31:18Z
TASA 2025 Reflection – Justine Topham
Attending TASA's 2025 Conference was an invaluable experience for my professional development before entering the final year of my PhD in 2026. The friendly and collegial atmosphere of the foyer as the central conference hub allowed for informal networking opportunities between attending sessions. It was exciting to forge cross-university connections with the diversity of both experienced academics and fellow PhD students.
I presented on the topic ‘Examining the “digital detox” trend: Individualised solutions to social media use’ in a Sociology of Media session. This drew on research from my PhD, which conducts a cross-platform discourse analysis of women’s self-help content across YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts. My presentation explored how the popular conversation around social media ‘addiction’ upholds the neoliberal logics of individual responsibility and self-discipline, and obscures how the affective affordances of algorithmic recommendations work to intensify social media’s ‘addictive’ quality.
Presenting at the conference offered an excellent opportunity to consolidate my public speaking skills and ability to communicate my research to different audiences. It was also a highly useful exercise for my PhD to receive live feedback from an audience to see which aspects of my research are particularly resonating, and bring to my attention possibilities for further inquiry I had not previously considered.
A number of the sessions I attended, such as the panel session on ‘The technopolitics of contemporary aesthetics,’ related to digital sociology and social media, which will inform and inspire my own research, and help me to clarify where my research sits within this broader field. I also attended sessions which did not fall into my immediate research areas, yet I found myself drawing unexpected parallels to my work, helping to expand beyond the narrow research bubble of the PhD which is so easy to fall into!
I am very grateful to TASA for providing my bursary, and (both during the conference and throughout the year) offering such an abundance of targeted support and opportunities for postgraduate students.