Rate My Professor Stephanie Wescott

Dr Stephanie Wescott is a Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences in the School of Education, Culture and Society at Monash University’s Faculty of Education. She is a feminist academic, writer, and speaker whose research drives systemic change in how schools and their communities understand and respond to gendered violence and misogyny. Her work examines epistemic currents governing lives, relations of power, and discourses shaping patriarchal social arrangements, including epistemological masculinist supremacy and violence. Wescott focuses on interventions to counter the influence of the manosphere in education settings and on advancing safety and justice for women, girls, and non-binary people in schools. She led the world’s first academic study on the impact of Andrew Tate’s influence in schools alongside Professor Steven Roberts, which has gained international attention. Her research interests encompass sexuality, gender and education; education policy; post-truth; education for social justice; sociology of education; feminism; manosphere; gender equity; and discourse analysis. Employing qualitative methodologies such as ethnography and discourse analysis, she investigates the implications of socio-political conditions for teachers’ work and policy enactment. Wescott teaches units in the Bachelor of Education and Master of Teaching programs, with a specialization in history and social sciences, and supervises PhD students on topics related to education policy, policy sociology, feminist approaches, and methodologies.

Wescott is a member of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and an affiliate researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. She has received the 2025 Sociology in Action Award from The Australian Sociological Association (with Steven Roberts) for outstanding contribution to sociological practice; the Australian Psychological Association Alt Metric Award (July 2025, with Steven Roberts); the 2024 Award for Research Excellence as an Early Career Researcher from the School of Education, Culture and Society; and the 2025 School of Education, Culture and Society Award for Innovation and Impact (with Steven Roberts). Key publications include “Conceptualising school-level responses to sexual harassment of women teachers as institutional gaslighting” (Wescott and Roberts, 2025, British Journal of Sociology of Education); “Beyond the clickbait: Analysing the masculinist ideology in Andrew Tate’s online written discourses” (Roberts et al., 2025, Cultural Sociology); “The reanimation of normative manhood acts in schools: teachers’ accounts of boys’ manosphere-aggravated misogyny” (Roberts et al., 2026, Gender and Education); “Hybrid network governance: methodologies of studying online and offline networking in global climate education policy” (Schuster et al., 2026, Journal of Education Policy); and “Feeling guilty” (McKay and Wescott, 2025, in Teachers' Emotional Experiences). With 23 research outputs, she is regularly invited to speak on expert panels and deliver keynotes for schools, organizations, and universities.