Academy Fellow

Professor Vromen is an internationally recognised political sociologist whose original work in citizen engagement has changed the field.

Her research highlights the persistence of political inequalities in representation and engagement of citizens in Australia and comparator countries. She has shown how digital transformations of politics improve equity of citizen voice through social media, online participation, and digital advocacy; while at the same time they disrupt everyday experiences of paid work, privacy, and policy delivery. Her research across these areas is extensively cited, and sets the agenda for new research on citizen engagement internationally. 

Professor Vromen’s research trajectory has been underpinned by significant research collaborations across countries, disciplines, and with mid and early career researchers. She has a deep commitment to collaborative research design and co-authorship with a range of scholars, as recognised by her mentoring awards listed below. She has a well-respected research identity across the social sciences (in political science and sociology) and the humanities (in media and communications), with journal publications, and over 40 invitations to keynote at conferences and deliver seminars nationally and internationally, across all three disciplines. She has also collaborated with scholars from the disciplines of: law, social policy and public administration, management and employment relations, and applied economics. 

She has been awarded >.5 million in competitive research funding, including two ARC Discovery Projects and a Linkage project. Her 2017 sole-authored book has been reviewed as “a must-read for anyone interested in how the internet is changing organized collective action”, kept in 220 libraries worldwide, and downloaded over 8,000 times. Her most significant scholarly impact has been as lead CI on a three-country comparative project on young people’s use of social media for civic engagement, funded by the US-based philanthropic Spencer Foundation (2013-2016). The top four articles from this project have received nearly 800 citations, and over 40,000 downloads. 

Increasingly, Professor Vromen has been committed to undertaking and facilitating engaged and impactful research. As a result, in 2020, she was appointed to the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy as The Bunting Chair in Public Administration, a role co-funded by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, where she is also Deputy Dean Research. In 2019, while Associate Dean Research at the University of Sydney, she led a three-university bid to win m to establish a NSW Public Policy Institute that fosters collaborative research between NSW government agencies and university researchers. She undertakes public and policy engagement through her own research, for example her two large University of Sydney funded projects, Digital Rights in Australia and Women and the Future of Work, included high-profile publicly accessible report launches, presentations to government and industry stakeholders, and ample legacy media and social media attention. In 2018 she gave a prestigious Senate Occasional Lecture on political engagement in the Australian digital context.  

In the last decade Professor Vromen has been committed to the advancement of the social sciences in Australia, this has included a term on the ARC College of Experts (2017-2020); and establishing the large and successful Political Organisations and Participation research group within the Australian Political Studies Association.

ARC College of Experts 2017-2020 

Professor of Political Sociology, University of Sydney, 1999-2020. 

• Visiting Senior Fellow, Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin, Germany 2018-2022. 

• 2018 Australian Political Studies Association Academic Leadership in Political Science award, nominated by colleagues  

• 2017 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Leadership and Mentoring, nominated by colleagues

• 2017 Sydney University Postgraduate Association Supervisor of the Year award, nominated by research students 

• 2009 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Teaching

1. Ariadne Vromen 2017, Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement, Palgrave Macmillan, UK, doi:10.1057/978-1-137-48865-7

2. Ariadne Vromen, Brian Loader, Michael Xenos, & Francesco Bailo, 2016, 'Everyday Making through Facebook Engagement: Young Citizens? Political Interactions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States', Political Studies, vol. 64, no. 3, pp. 513-533.

3. Darren Halpin, Ariadne Vromen, Michael Vaughan, & Mahin Raissi, 2018, 'Online petitioning and politics: the development of Change.org in Australia', Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 428-445.

4. Gerard Goggin, Ariadne Vromen, Kimberlee Weatherall, Fiona Martin, Adele Webb, Lucy Sunman and Francesco Bailo (2017) Digital Rights in Australia University of Sydney.

5. Marian Baird, Rae Cooper, Elizabeth Hill, Elspeth Probyn & Ariadne Vromen (2018) Women and the Future of Work Report, University of Sydney.