Dr Scott Kerpen

Personal statement

Scott completed his PhD at Cardiff University in July 2022. His interdisciplinary project critically engaged with questions surrounding digital empowerment and activism for marginalised groups and communities.

More specifically, it focused on how digital media and technology can come to both enable and displace opportunities for LGBTQIA+ belonging, community building, activism and identity work, paying particular attention to how young people navigate social, cultural, psychological and geographical constraints of cisheteromasculinity.

Scott's thesis highlighted classed, racialised and gendered challenges of being and becoming with digital media and technology. His project contributed to digital and participatory research methods, generating data with participants through biographical relational map interviews and a researcher-solicited social media group.  

While focusing on LGBTQIA+ youths, Scott's thesis contributed more broadly to questions around the democratising potential of digital communication, political polarisation, sex education, and interactions between online and offline worlds.

Academic qualification

• BA Journalism, Media and Sociology, Cardiff University
• MSc Social Science Research Methods, Cardiff University
• PhD, Cardiff University 

Areas of expertise

• Gender and sexuality
• Working class masculinities
• Power and resistance
• Sociological interactions with media and digital media
• Qualitative research methods
• Participatory and creative research methods
• Post-structuralism, New Materialism and Psychosocial studies

Teaching

Scott is the Module Leader for:

• SOC5102 - Health: Mind, Body and Society
• CR14101 - Sociology of Deviance and Control

He also teaches on:

• SOC4100 - Power and Resistance