Rate My Professor Emma Baulch

Emma Baulch is an Associate Professor of Media and Communications at Monash University Malaysia's School of Arts and Social Sciences. She holds the positions of Director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre for Digital Tech and Society (SEADS) and Deputy Head of School (Research). Baulch obtained her PhD in Politics from Monash University in 2004, with a thesis examining amateur music scenes in 1990s Bali and the role of electric guitars in shaping youth communities, published as Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk and Death Metal in 1990s’ Bali by Duke University Press in 2007. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Asian Studies from the University of Sydney, awarded in 1990.

Baulch's career includes postdoctoral fellowships at Leiden University (2003-2005) on MTV Indonesia and public culture, Queensland University of Technology (2006-2008) on digital inclusion, and the Australian National University as an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow (2009-2012) on indie networks in Indonesia. She was Lecturer at ANU (2012-2014), Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at QUT (2014-2017), joining Monash Malaysia in 2018. Awards include the Annual John Legge Prize for Research Excellence (2002) from Monash University's Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Annual Publication Prize from Monash School of Political and Social Enquiry (2002), and International Association for the Study of Popular Music Annual Publication Prizes (2012, 2015). Her research uses cultural studies and ethnographic methods to explore media technologies' interplay with Southeast Asian societies, focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia, digital infrastructures, popular music, class, race, and everyday life. Key works include Genre Publics: Popular Music, Technologies and Class in Indonesia (Wesleyan University Press, 2020); co-edited mHealth Innovation in Asia: Grassroots Challenges and Practical Interventions (Springer, 2017) and Digital Transactions in Asia (Routledge, 2019); co-authored WhatsApp: From a One-to-One Messaging App to a Global Communication Platform (Polity, 2024); and articles such as “Hijabers on Instagram: Using Visual Social Media to Construct the Ideal Muslim Woman” (Social Media + Society, 2018) and “The Everyman and the Dung Beetle: New Media Infrastructures for Lower-Class Cultural Politics” (Cultural Politics, 2017). Her contributions advance Asian cultural studies and media communications, aligning with UN SDGs on gender equality, innovation, and reduced inequalities.