Dr Rachel Berryman is a media scholar studying emerging technologies, digital cultures, and the platformisation of cultural production. She was awarded a PhD in Internet Studies from Curtin University in 2026. Her doctoral thesis analyses the fictional, social media entities popularly known as “virtual influencers”, exploring their history, impact, aesthetics, and commercialisation, particularly in East Asia. Rachel's research on social media, intimacy, and celebrity can be found in journals such as Convergence, Screen, and the Journal of Gender Studies. She is co-editor of two forthcoming books: Routledge Handbook of Influencer Cultures in the Asia Pacific (with Crystal Abidin and Hao Zheng) and Virtual Celebrity Cultures in Asia (with Crystal Abidin), expected for publication in 2027.

Rachel is a co-founder and co-director of the Discord Academic Research Community (D/ARC), and a member of the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab) and Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). She is currently working as a Research Assistant across several projects in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry.

You can learn more about Rachel's work via her website: rachelberryman.com