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Scott Rodgers

Positions held:
  • Reader in Media and Geography, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
Email
  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    My research sits at the interface of media and geography. I bring geographical sensibilities to the study of media, focusing on the urban and local geographies of social media and digital platforms, with methods that bridge ethnographic and computational approaches.

    I recently helped shape Birkbeck's new Centre for Creative AI, and my research is moving in a related direction, extending the questions I have asked about social media in everyday urban life into how AI is becoming the next mediating infrastructure of that same life.

    This concern with the lived and ordinary character of mediation has been a through-line across my work, including in Conditions of Mediation: Phenomenological Perspectives on Media (Peter Lang, 2017), co-edited with Tim Markham.

    Podcasting has grown into a sustained part of my research and engagement practice. I am the inaugural Audio Editor for Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture - an experiment in 'small-gauge' online scholarship - where I host the Mediapolis Now podcast, alongside my longer-running Publicly Sited channel.

    I joined Birkbeck in 2010, and am currently Vice-Chair of the ECREA Media, Cities and Space Section, Subject Lead for Film, Media and Journalism, and Programme Director for the BA Digital Media.

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Subject Lead for Film, Media and Journalism
    • Chair, College Programmes Committee
    • Programme Director, BA Digital Media

    Professional memberships

    • Fellow, AdvanceHE

    Honours and awards

    • Birkbeck Excellence in Teaching Award Birkbeck, University of London, January 2016
    • Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Birkbeck, University of London, May 2026

    ORCID

    0000-0002-1544-8743

  • Research

    Research

    Research overview

    My work has long been orientated around the politics of place in a mediated world. Recently, this has focused on the urban and local geographies of social media and digital platforms, examined through methods that bridge ethnographic and computational approaches.

    A central strand has been my work as PI on a project exploring place-named Facebook groups as an ordinary urban communication infrastructure across Greater London. A first paper from this project, with Andrea Ballatore, Liam McLoughlin and Susan Moore, appeared in Environment and Planning B in 2024, mapping these groups across the metropolitan area. A second paper, drawing on in-depth qualitative work with twelve London groups and contributing to debates on platform governance, is nearing submission. A public-facing report, Facebook London, will appear in newspaper format in 2026, translating the project's findings for policymakers, planners and communications professionals working with London's local communities.

    Alongside this, I have worked to consolidate quali-quantitative approaches to social media research. With Robert Topinka, I co-led a British Academy Talent Development Award on misinformation in everyday life, which underpinned the establishment of one of the UK's first institution-level installations of the 4CAT platform at Birkbeck. I was also part of the DFF Explorative Network on Digital Placemaking and Soft City Sensing (2024-2026), which produced the Sensing the Digital City white paper as its main collaborative output. With Yu-Shan Tseng, I am co-editing a special issue of Urban Studies on ordinary democracy in digital cities, accepted following peer review of the proposal.

    A more recent strand of editorial and convening work has gathered around the Synthetic City, exploring how AI is reshaping urban life, including a conference I co-organised in Dublin in 2023, and a forthcoming dossier in Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture (publication August 2026), of which I am lead editor. Connected to this, I helped shape the intellectual framework and pedagogical approach of Birkbeck's Centre for Creative AI, which provides an institutional anchor for my emerging research on AI in urban communication and creative practice.

    Research Centres and Institutes

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    9

    Enquiries are welcome for doctoral projects involving any combination of research on:

    • Urban and local geographies of social media and digital platforms
    • Place-based politics, participation and contestation in digital cities
    • AI, creative practice, and everyday urban communication
    • Platform and locality dimensions of contentious urban environmental issues (e.g. low-traffic neighbourhoods, sustainable transport)
    • Quali-quantitative approaches to social media and platform research
    • Phenomenological and practice-theoretical approaches to media

    I would be more than happy to discuss your ideas for doctoral research if they touch on the above areas. However please visit this College guidance for prospective MPhil/PhD students before you get in touch, and ideally make sure you have drafted a research proposal.

    Current doctoral researchers

    • EMILY RUSTIN
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Description:
      Place holder
    • JUNE YOUNG AN
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Description:
      Place holder
    • LILY BICHARD-COLLINS
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Description:
      Place holder

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • MATTHEW MORGAN
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      The Belfast Bohemian of British Cinema: The fil-work of Brian Desmond Hurst
      Description:
      Place holder
      Awarded:
      2021
    • GUNES TAVMEN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Description:
      Place holder
      Awarded:
      2019
    • HANNAH BARTON
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Description:
      Place holder
      Awarded:
      2023
    • RICHARD EVANS
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      Geographies of Non-fiction Cinema: explorations of landscape and the nonhuman in Scottish and Swedish non-fiction film, circa 1930-1950.
      Description:
      Place holder
      Awarded:
      2021
    • JO COLEMAN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Description:
      Place holder
      Awarded:
      2020
    • DARIO LOLLI
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Description:
      Place holder
      Awarded:
      2018

    Teaching

    In recent years I have developed and delivered four main modules across undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Working with Digital Media (Level 4), which is a 'practice first' module aimed at building digital literacies through hands-on engagement, while remaining conceptually grounded. Introduction to Digital Culture (Level 4, with Dr Robert Topinka) offers an accessible introduction to key concepts such as interface, data, connection and labour. Media, Technology and Culture (Level 5) takes a thematic look at the ambiguous relationships of media technology and media culture, and is anchored to a weekly podcast series of the same name. Critical and Creative AI (Level 7, with Dr Joel McKim and Dr Robert Topinka) introduces students to working hands-on with AI tools, and is becoming a core module on Birkbeck's new MA in AI and Creative Media (launching 2026-27). The connecting thread across these modules is a commitment to conceptually underpinned practice, digital and data literacy, and increasingly the integration of creative AI into media education.

    Earlier in my time at Birkbeck, I taught Media, Digitalisation and the City (Level 6/7) for over a decade, which encouraged students to examine some comparatively unconventional forms of 'media' as they appear across urban spaces and city life. For some years I co-taught Theoretical Perspectives on Media with Prof Tim Markham, an interdisciplinary postgraduate module bringing together politics, sociology, geography and philosophy to think about how media is 'lived'. I also led the initial design of Doing Film, Media and Cultural Studies (Level 4), both an introduction to academic techniques and to the interface between media theory and practice. More recently, I convened the Level 6 Industry Placement module (2023-25) as part of my role as School Employability Lead.

    You can read more about my learning and teaching activities on my personal website.

    Teaching modules

    • Urban Sustainability
    • Dissertation MA Film and Screen Media
    • Masterclass in Social Research
    • Critical and Creative AI
    • The Arts: Perspectives and Possibilities
    • Working with Digital Media
    • Introduction to Digital Culture
    • Media, Technology and Culture
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book review

    Book section

    Conference item

    Editorial

    Other

  • Business and community

    Business and community

    Media

    I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

    • Social media and local politics, including misinformation in place-based settings
    • Place-named social media groups (e.g. neighbourhood Facebook groups) and their role in urban communication
    • Contentious urban transport and environmental issues as they play out across social media (e.g. low-traffic neighbourhoods, ULEZ)

    Outreach

    Audio Editor, Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture; host of the Mediapolis Now podcast, which interviews scholars, artists and practitioners on the relationships of media and the city. Recent guests include Myria Georgiou, Gillian Rose, Burcu Baykurt, Manu Luksh, Rebecca Ross and Christian Olesen.

    Host, Publicly Sited podcast channel, which includes three editions of the Media, Technology and Culture podcast and The Mediated City podcast. Combined listenership is over 11,000 plays across more than 20 countries.

    Facebook London (forthcoming 2026): a public report in newspaper format, translating research findings on place-named Facebook groups for an audience of policymakers, planners and communications professionals working with London's local communities.

    Residency at the Venice Biennale Architettura 2021 (with Prof Susan Moore, UCL Bartlett), exploring social media and everyday urban life through experimental writing. Outputs included online publication, video clips displayed in the 'We Like' exhibition at the Austrian Pavilion, and a series of short pieces in Platform Urbanism and its Discontents (nai010, 2021).

    Platform KX: a public walking tour of media and platform-related sites in the King's Cross redevelopment, now in its fifth iteration (desk-based Google Earth version here). The tour is connected to ongoing research on the physical and digital layers of the redevelopment site.