Brady Robards

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Brady Robards

Assoc Professor

 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5031-1235
20102025

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

Brady Robards (he/him) is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. He is a sociologist of youth, gender, sexuality, and digital cultures, with programs of research on social media use among young people, LGBTQ+ people, and in various collaborative research contexts including related to alcohol consumption, digital advertising, employment futures, and wellbeing.  
 
Brady is the Co-Convenor (with Akane Kanai) of the Monash Digital Cultures Research Group.
 
Brady's recent projects include:
  • Social Media & Employment: An Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) project on young people, social media and employment futures. This project investigates how a) young people present professional identities on social media when preparing for employment, and b) how employers use social media in recruitment.
  • Alochol and Nightlife Promotion on Social Media: An ARC Linkage Project with the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) and Nic Carah (UQ), Amy Dobson (Curtin), Dan Angus (QUT) and Aimee Brownbill (FARE) looking at how young people experience alcohol and nightlife promotion on social media. We conducted interviews, focus groups, and detailed data collection with young people around Australia to explore the kinds of promotional material they see on social media, their understandings of algorithmic advertising, and views on regulation and change.
  • Growing up on social media: With Sian Lincoln, since 2014 Brady has been studying sustained or longitudinal social media use among people in their 20s who have grown up using social media. Brady and Sian developed the 'social media scroll back' method to examine longitudinal digital traces inscribed on social media through regular use over years, where researchers can work with research participants as co-analysts of their own digital traces.
  • Scrolling Beyond Binaries: With Brendan Churchill, Paul Byron, Son Vivienne, and Benjamin Hanckel, since 2016 Brady has been studying social media use among LGBTIQ+ young people. This project employed mixed-methods, including a survey conducted in 2016 and interviews conducted in 2017. Key findings cover how different platforms are used to manage different audiences and networks, and how networked publics operate to build a sense of connection, community, and facilitate learning among queer and gender-diverse young people.
  • Young People's Experiences of Australian Public Services: This study aimed to understand young people’s experiences and perceptions of Australian public services and how young people connect with them at different times in their lives. Findings from this study went on to underpin Australia's youth policy framework. The project was undertaken on behalf of the Australian Public Service with Steven Roberts, Jo Lindsay, Barbara Barbosa Neves, Zareh Ghazarian, Jonathan Smith, Jacqueline Laughland-Booy, and Verity Trott. 
  • Social Media & Unhealthy Marketing: We partnered with VicHealth to study how products like alcohol, fast food, sugary drinks, and gambling are advertised to young people via social media. This project is with Nic Carah (UQ), Amy Dobson (Curtin), Karla Elliott, Claire Tanner, Steven Roberts, Michael Savic, and Chiara De Lazzari. We took a citizen science approach, recruiting young people to take screenshots of the advertising they see, collect them for us, and discuss them with us as part of our analysis.
 
 
Research supervision
Brady supervises research projects (PhD and Masters level) in a range of areas, primarily in the sociology of youth and in the study of digital cultures. 
 
Current PhD projects being supervised:
  • Algorithms and Affects: Proliferating Gender Equality Backlashes amongst Boys and Young Men in Australia
  • Digital Dating Abuse in Australia: Young Women’s Safety and Resistance Work
  • Using social media to understand formal and informal sexual education of non-heterosexual students
  • Gender, singleness and online hate: comparing how gender is constructed in internet forums discussing singleness, involuntary celibacy and dating strategies
  • Young people's experiences of dating apps and digitally mediated relationships
  • Making masculinities: Subaltern young men’s everyday digital lives 
  • Assembling fitspirational bodies: Social media and gender identity work
  • Young LGBTQ+ people's political engagement in Australia
  • Antifeminist movements on social media in China
Past supervisions:
  • Anti-social networks: exploring the Australian far-right from a complex adaptive systems perspective - Dr Callum Jones
  • Emotion, touch and male bonding: An in-depth investigation of masculinity and male friendship in Australia - Dr Brittany Ralph
  • Digital Belonging: Polymedia and Adolescent Migrants in Australia - Dr Claire Moran
  • A Sexual Fields approach to Sexual Racism: A cross-sectional examination of overseas-born Asian Men who have sex with Men’s (MSM) experiences of individual and collective erotic life - Dr Gene Lim
  • Nomophobia and Deterrence: how smartphones impact compliance and younger drivers - Dr Fareed Kaviani
  • Why Wearables? Understanding practices around self-tracking devices - Dr Ben Lyall
  • Gay Neo-Tribes: An Exploration of Space and Travel Behaviour - Dr Oscar Vorobjovas-Pinta
Teaching responsibilities
  • ATS1366 Big Ideas for Better Futures
  • ATS2561 Sex and the media
  • ATS2720 Youth, culture and social change
Previous affiliations
2017-2022: Senior Lecturer ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, Monash
2013-2017:  Lecturer in Sociology, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania
2011-2012:  Associate Lecturer & First Year Advisor, School of Humanities, Griffith University

Research interests

  • Social media (long-term use, memory, and impact on employment)
  • Youth culture and internet cultures
  • Gender and sexuality
  • Digital research methods and ethics

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 5 - Gender Equality
  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

External positions

Member, Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)

2011 → …

Member, The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)

2008 → …

Research area keywords

  • social media
  • youth
  • gender
  • sexuality
  • qualitative methodology
  • internet research
  • digital society

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or
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View all 16 projects
View all 75 research outputs
  • 1 Contribution to conference
View all 40 press/media