Jo Coghlan is an Associate Professor in Cultural and Political Sociology at the University of New England.

Jo’s research leadership has shaped interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of popular culture, media, and critical social inquiry. Her work examines how popular culture functions as a cultural infrastructure through which power, identity, environment, labour, and value are organised and contested. Spanning television, film, celebrity culture, fashion, branding, and environmental humanities, her research advances field-defining contributions to understanding how media circulates moral, political, and ecological meaning in everyday life. Through major monographs, edited collections, postgraduate supervision, and editorial leadership, her work demonstrates sustained impact on international debates around media, governance, inequality, and cultural power.

Jo is co-founder of the Popular Culture Research Network (PopCRN), established in 2021 with Lisa J. Hackett and Huw Nolan as an internationally oriented research hub based in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England. PopCRN was conceived to leverage global research expertise in popular culture and social studies and has since developed into Australia’s leading collaborative network in the field. Through a sustained conference programme (21 themed conferences between 2021 and 2026), major edited collections, special journal issues, and monograph development, Coghlan has provided strategic intellectual leadership that has enabled scholars across career stages to undertake ambitious, internationally visible research.

Under her co-leadership, PopCRN has functioned as both a research incubator and dissemination platform, generating a substantial body of peer-reviewed outputs across Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Reaktion Books, Bloomsbury, Springer, and leading international journals. This work addresses how media industries and popular culture respond to environmental crisis, political polarisation, and shifting cultural norms, with particular attention to questions of power, identity, labour, gender, environment, and value. The network’s publishing programme—spanning monographs, edited volumes, and special journal editions—demonstrates sustained research coherence, international collaboration, and field-shaping impact.

Beyond academic publishing, Coghlan’s leadership has translated research into significant public and media engagement. Through regular contributions to The Conversation, international media interviews (including The New York Times, The West Australian, ABC, SBS, and Radio New Zealand), and sustained social-media presence, her work reaches large public audiences and informs contemporary debate on culture, politics, and social change. Collectively, this activity demonstrates research impact that extends beyond the academy, positioning popular culture scholarship as a critical resource for understanding environmental crisis, political legitimacy, and cultural transformation in everyday life.