Scott Mclean

In 2021, Scott began work on a five-year project of research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council: "A Century of Shaping Gender and Class: University Extension in Canada, 1874 - 1974." Through this research, Scott compares discourses and practices of extension work at universities from all ten Canadian provinces, and analyzes connections between such extension work and the evolving ways through which hegemonic forms of gender and social class shaped people's lives.

From 2017 through 2021, Scott served as the University of Calgary Representative in Mexico.  He worked from an office in Mexico City, developing and supporting opportunities for members of the University of Calgary community to learn and work in collaboration with peers from Mexican institutions of higher education.

From 2011 through 2016, Scott’s research focused on exploring the experience of reading self-help books in the areas of health and well-being, careers and financial success, and interpersonal relationship. His research team interviewed 134 readers of self-help books, and made important contributions to understanding why, how, and with what outcomes men and women read such books.

From 2004 through 2011, Scott undertook research in the historical sociology of university-based adult education at five Canadian universities: McGill University, University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Montreal, and University of Saskatchewan. This research linked the evolution of university continuing education to broader political-economic changes in Canadian society, and produced insightful case studies about the government of subjectivity.

Between 1994 and 2004, Scott’s research had a primarily applied focus. He led a five-year program of intervention and research to support healthcare reform in the province of Saskatchewan, developing capacity for health promotion work among individuals and organizations. He conducted research for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, exploring how distance education and capacity-building strategies could be productively applied to solving global challenges of food insecurity and rural poverty. He investigated the professional practice of adult and continuing education, publishing studies of needs assessment, program planning, and evaluation, and introducing continuing education practitioners to contemporary sociological concepts and theories.

Scott’s PhD dissertation (Carleton University, 1994) examined the relationships between subjectivity and power in processes of social transformation, through a historical and sociological study of adult education in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut. This work documented the colonization of the central Arctic by the Canadian state, and demonstrated how the construction of individualizing practices of governance was integral to such colonization.