Rate My Professor Aneta Podkalicka

Dr. Aneta Podkalicka is a Senior Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies in the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Faculty of Arts, at Monash University, Melbourne. She joined Monash University in 2016 after working as a researcher at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, where she served as a postdoctoral research fellow on an ARC-funded Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation project studying youth media social enterprise, and later as a chief investigator on an interdisciplinary project funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living, examining media and communications in sustainable home renovations. Aneta teaches undergraduate and postgraduate media units covering the role of media in social life and social change, media analytics, and research training. She supervises PhD students across media and communication, sociology of consumption, and design disciplines and is currently accepting PhD students. She is a member of the Media and Environment research group in the School of Media, Film and Journalism.

Aneta has collaborated with scholars and partners from not-for-profit, government, and commercial sectors on projects related to media and everyday life, social inclusion, consumption, and environmental sustainability. Her current research focuses on digital and automated technologies and work futures; thrift, secondhand, and circular economies; and environmental media. She serves as a chief investigator on the project 'Workers in transition through automation, digitalisation and robotisation of work' (2020–2025), involving international collaborators including Sarah Pink, Mark Andrejevic, and others. Aneta is co-author of the books Using Media for Social Innovation (Intellect, 2018, with Ellie Rennie) and Grand Designs: Consumer Markets and Home-Making (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, with Esther Milne and Jenny Kennedy). She also co-edited a cultural history of skiing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, with Philipp Strobl). Selected recent publications include: 'Communication and interaction in digitised workplaces: experiences of Australian retail workers' (Communication Research and Practice, 2025); 'Workers in transition: automating retail' (Monash University commissioned report, 2025, with Mark Andrejevic); 'House-sharing as a staged and mediated practice: representing self and home in Melbourne share-houses' (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2024, with Meg Mundell); 'The craft of reuse: Making communities at charity second-hand shops' (chapter in Craft Communities, Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, with Melisa Duque); and 'Popular Environmental Media in Australia: Reflections on Audience Engagement and Impact' (Media International Australia, 2024, with Daniel Nilsson and Simon Troon). Aneta has 45 research outputs listed on her Monash profile.