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Dr Jessica Drakett

Senior Lecturer

Jessica is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. She completed her doctoral research here in 2017, with the thesis titled Constructions of Gender and Humour in Technology Work: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis, supervised by Dr Bridgette Rickett, Dr Katy Day, and Dr Kate Milnes.

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About

Jessica is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. She completed her doctoral research here in 2017, with the thesis titled Constructions of Gender and Humour in Technology Work: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis, supervised by Dr Bridgette Rickett, Dr Katy Day, and Dr Kate Milnes.

Jessica is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. She completed her doctoral research here in 2017, with the thesis titled Constructions of Gender and Humour in Technology Work: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis, supervised by Dr Bridgette Rickett, Dr Katy Day and Dr Kate Milnes.

Jessica's research research explores the gender gap in technology from a feminist poststructuralist standpoint, with a specific focus on organisational and Internet humour (in particular, Internet memes). Prior to completing her PhD, Jessica achieved a BSc (Hons) in psychology at Sheffield Hallam University, before working as a software engineer for a company providing clinical software to the NHS and other organisations.

Jessica serves on the BPS Psychology of Women and Equalities Section (POWES) committee, having previously managed the social media and web presence of the section, and is currently working as conference lead for the annual POWES conference. Between 2013 and 2017, she worked as co-editor of the International Society for Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) newsletter and blog.

Research interests

Jessica's research interests broadly span the following areas:

  • qualitative research methods
  • critical feminist psychology
  • organisational psychology
  • cyberpsychology
  • social psychology

Publications (9)

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Chapter
Gender and Power in Technological Contexts
Featured 29 December 2023 The Palgrave Handbook of Power, Gender, and Psychology Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
AuthorsAuthors: Drakett J, Editors: Zurbriggen E, Capdevila R

This chapter explores the various ways in which we can conceive of gender and power in relation to technology. How do gender and power connect in technological contexts? What does power look like here, how is it shaped and allocated, and who possesses it? What possibilities may exist with regard to reshaping power through acts of resistance in and through technology? To examine these questions, this chapter attends to considerations of gender, power, and technology in relation to labor, focusing specifically on the domains of technology education and work, and activism in technological contexts. The chapter begins by firstly considering feminist approaches to gender and power via technology studies. Secondly, the chapter moves to examine the interplay of gender and power in relation to technology education and work. Finally, the chapter explores some of the possibilities and pitfalls new technologies may offer to feminist activists as both a tool and space of resistance and protest.

Journal article
The Cost of Anger: Gender and Collective Violence in Technology
Featured 15 November 2018 Psychology of Women and Equalities Review1(2):44-48 The British Psychological Society
AuthorsDrakett J, Kenny MR
Journal article

Book Review - Christine Hine, The Internet: Understanding Qualitative Research

Featured 2015 Qualitative Research in Psychology12(3):340-342 Taylor & Francis (Routledge): STM, Behavioural Science and Public Health Titles
Conference Contribution

One Does Not Simply Sample The Internet: On Coding The Race of Pokémon and Other First World Problems. A Thematic Analysis of Popular Internet Memes

Featured 10 July 2014 BPS Psychology of Women’s Section Conference Windsor, U.K
AuthorsRickett B, Drakett J, day K
Conference Contribution

“You should take the best people” - Exploring the Discourse of Meritocracy in Technology

Featured 2017 British Psychological Society Psychology of Women Section Annual Conference Windsor, UK
AuthorsDrakett J, Rickett B, Day K, Milnes K
Journal article
Old Jokes, New Media – Online Sexism and Constructions of Gender in Internet Memes
Featured 08 February 2018 Feminism and Psychology28(1):109-127 SAGE Publications
AuthorsDrakett J, Rickett B, Day K, Milnes K

The Internet is a space where the harassment of women and marginalised groups online has attracted the attention of both academic and popular press. Feminist research has found that instances of online sexism and harassment are often reframed as “acceptable” by constructing them as a form of humour. Following this earlier research, this present paper explores a uniquely technologically-bound type of humour by adopting a feminist, social-constructionist approach to examine the content of popular Internet memes. Using thematic analysis on a sample of 240 image macro Internet memes (those featuring an image with a text caption overlaid), we identified two broad, overarching themes – Technological Privilege and Others. Within the analysis presented here, complex and troubling constructions of gendered identity in online humour are explored, illustrating the potential for the othering and exclusion of women through humour in technological spaces. We argue that this new iteration of heteronormative, hegemonic masculinity in online sexism, couched in “irony” and “joking”, serves to police, regulate and create rightful occupants and owners of such spaces.

Conference Contribution

Gatekeepers and barriers to STEM: A feminist relational discourse analysis

Featured 12 July 2018 British Psychological Society Psychology of Women and Equalities Section Annual Conference Windsor, UK
AuthorsDrakett J, Rickett B, Day K, Milnes K
Conference Contribution

“The Only Girl" - Being a Woman in IT

Featured 2015 British Psychological Society Psychology of Women Section Annual Conference Windsor, UK
AuthorsDrakett J, Rickett B, Day K, Milnes K
Conference Contribution

"As long as you can do the job, they don't give a shit" : Dissolving Gender in Technology

Featured 2016 British Psychological Society Psychology of Women Section Annual Conference Windsor, UK
AuthorsDrakett J, Rickett B, Day K, Milnes K

Current teaching

Jessica teaches on the undergraduate and postgraduate psychology courses at Leeds Beckett University, including both onsite and distance learning provisions. She covers a range of topics within psychology including:

  • qualitative and quantitative research methods
  • statistics
  • social psychology
  • critical and philosophical issues in psychology
  • dissertation supervision

She has also worked as a distance learning tutor in psychology for the Open University.

Grants (1)

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Grant

Beyond Meat and Memes: Mapping the vegan activist discourse on Tik Tok and Instagram

British Academy - 01 January 2024
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Dr Jessica Drakett
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