Sam Mejias

Sam Mejias (he/him) is Associate Professor of Social Justice and Community Engagement in the School of Design Strategies, and a Research Fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Working primarily as an ethnographer, Sam's work explores the cultural politics of social justice and civic engagement in the US, Europe and the Middle East. His projects investigate how design, discourse and communication influence the promotion of critical learning, equity, and civic engagement in the lives of young people in formal and informal spaces. Sam currently leads two international research projects, STEM Inside: Learning from Creative Software Production, and Empowering Democratic Citizenship through Education in Kuwait. Additionally, he is a co-investigator on two national studies funded by the Wallace Foundation exploring the impact of out-of-school time learning on equitable youth development across the United States. A separate, recently launched project, Social Justice on Social Media, investigates the pedagogical and political influence of digitally mediated concepts such as 'wokeness' and 'cancel culture' on American society. Sam is also a multi-instrumentalist, sound designer and multimedia producer. His research-led creative practices experiment with music and sound engagement as a means of informing new methodological approaches for working with young people in media education research.