Josh Bowsher

Dr Josh Bowsher is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Criminology at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex. He previously taught at Keele University (2017–2018) and was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Brunel University (2018–2021). His interdisciplinary research spans Sociology, Law, and Digital Culture, with a focus on human rights, neoliberalism, financialization, and digital capitalism.

His research interests include:

• Sociology of Human Rights
• Digital Culture and Infrastructure
• Critical Social and Cultural Theory
• Foucault and Post-Autonomist Marxism (e.g., Maurizio Lazzarato)
• Epistemology of Donna Haraway
• Transitional Justice and Neoliberal Reconciliation
• Debt, Financialization, and Subjectivity

His recent publications, including the book The Informational Logic of Human Rights (2022), critically examine how digital technologies, data infrastructures, and financial logics reshape human rights practices and activist epistemologies. His work combines archival research, ethnography, and analysis of grey literature, often drawing from Science and Technology Studies and Media Studies.

His scientific recognition includes:

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2018–2021)
• British Academy Grant: Human Rights Early-Warning Systems: Genealogies of Cybernetic Prediction and Peace (2024)

Dr Bowsher teaches undergraduate modules on Digital Societies and Technology and the Human. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2023) and welcomes PhD students working in human rights, digital culture, software studies, or critical social theory. He currently leads a research project on the genealogies of cybernetic prediction in human rights early-warning systems.