Dr Yen Nee Wong

Profile

I joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy in 2024. I am an interdisciplinary sociologist whose research is principally concerned with gender and sexuality, social inequalities and organisational cultures, and how these shape people’s experiences and relationships within social and institutional contexts. My current policing research examines perceptions of organisational justice, trust and confidence among police personnel in relation to online harms management, as well as the relationship between policing and different communities in the digital shift towards algorithmic policing.

Before joining Leeds, I was an ESRC SeNSS postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Kent and a Research Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University. I completed my PnD in Sociology at the University of Surrey and subsequently held lecturing positions in Criminology and Sociology at the University of Exeter and Royal Holloway, University of London. My interdisciplinary academic background also encompasses gender studies, data science and psychology, which informs my use of both established social science approaches and emerging computational methods.

I sit on the editorial board for Sociological Research Online, and am an invited peer reviewer for ESRC Peer Review College and international journals including: Current Sociology; Ethnic and Racial Studies; International Journal of Qualitative Methods; International Journal of Sociology of Leisure; Journal of Homosexuality and Sport History Review.

Responsibilities

• Deputy Director of Internationalisation

Research interests

I am a queer feminist sociologist researching gender and sexuality, policing, organisational cultures, media and digital technologies. Across these areas, I am particularly interested in how inequalities and relations of power shape people’s experiences of institutions, organisational responses to harm and processes of social, cultural and technological change.

A key strand of my research examines policing, gender and organisational culture, with particular interests in organisational justice, trust and institutional responses to harm. I have worked with UK police services on the EPSRC-funded project ‘3PO: Protecting public-facing professionals and their dependents online’ to examine organisational responses to online harms affecting public-facing professionals. My work considers how organisational cultures and perceptions of fairness shape trust and engagement with institutional interventions, as well as the possibilities and challenges of achieving meaningful organisational change.

My wider research explores how gender and sexual inequalities are produced, negotiated and challenges across media, cultural and technological contexts. This includes research on LGBTQ+ identities and leisure, media representation, embodiment and data-driven media personalisation. I have contributed to interdisciplinary projects including ‘Citizens’ councils on data-driven media personalisation’ (AI4ME), ‘Queering Shelter’ (Leverhulme) and LGBT+ media representation on BBC's Strictly Come Dancing: Same-sex dance pairings as a means to promote inclusive participation in ballroom dancing? (ESRC). While spanning different empirical settings, this work is connected by an interest in how institutions, cultural practices and technologies can reproduce or challenge inequalities and how people experience and respond to processes of change. Across my research, I use qualitative, ethnographic, participatory and computational methods. My ESRC-funded monograph Equality Dancesport: Gender and Sexual Identities Matter (Routledge, 2024) examines how gender and sexual identities shape participation in Dancesport, extending my broader interests in embodiment, LGBTQ+ inclusion, leisure and cultural representation.

Qualifications

• PhD in Sociology
• MPhil in Gender
• MSc Data Science and its Applications
• MA Urban Design and Development
• BA Architectural Studies / BA Psychology

Professional memberships

• Higher Education Academy (Fellow)
• British Sociological Association
• Scottish Institute for Policing Research
• European Sociological Association
• European Communication Research and Education Association

Student education

I teach and convene undergraduate and postgraduate modules across the School on topics including:

• AI, Algorithmic Cultures and Datafication
• Digital Inequalities and Data Justice
• Research Methods (qualitative)
• Gender, Technology and the Body
• Gender, Media and Popular Culture

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies

Current postgraduate researchers

• Sumeyye Kara
• Ruiyang Han
• Linda Wu