Kerpen, Scott

Scott Kerpen
Start date:
October 2015
Research Topic:
Queer(ing) masculinity: An exploration of indentities and digitally mediated cultures and practices across South Wales and South West England
Research pathway:
Research Supervisor:
Matthew Williams and Valarie Walkerdine
Supervising school:
School of Social Sciences,
Primary funding source:
ESRC Studentship

My research explores queer(-ing) masculinity across South Wales and South West England.  I consider how commodified and commercialised representational forms, critiqued for celebrating identities that assimilate with mainstream ideals around gender and sexuality, are reproduced, resisted and redefined through the digitally mediated cultures and practices of young men who have sex with men, and trans* and non-binary identities assigned male, aged between 18 and 25. In light of recent tensions between binary and non-binary gender and sexual identities, my project is committed to difference. I do not assume that any identity is more or less valid or inherently privileged or less subversive as identities mean and do different things for different people. Through adopting an unstructured and participatory approach, producing data with participants, I consider how gender and sexual identities, whether binary or non-binary, emerge from a variety of experiences, desires and anxieties that cannot be reduced to universal experiences, motives or effects.