Gender and Sexuality
The Gender and Sexuality cluster draws together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from Media and Cultural Studies, Art and Design, English and Health Studies. We are interested in the ways in which gender and sexuality are socially and culturally constructed and the place of sex and sexual representation as part of everyday life online and offline.
We are interested in the ways in which gender and sexuality are socially and culturally constructed and the place of sex and sexual representation as part of everyday life online and offline. We aim to produce research that promotes our shared ethos of sex positivity, inclusivity and intersectionality. Through regular shared discussion in the cluster, we aim to encourage collaborative research to allow for researchers’ development, creating a distinctive research focus organised around our themes.
Our recent work has explored the politics of representation, in particular sexual representation; the connections between gay pornography and the making of a gay identity; gendered experience and the everyday; comedy, gender and contemporary feminisms; the social and cultural construction of masculinities; sexual economies and entrepreneurship; and alternative femininities/sexualities.
Areas of activity
- Performances of gender
- Gendered media audiences
- Gender and the digital sphere
- Non-normative sexual cultures
- Digital intimacies and sexual representation
- Contemporary masculinities as they are transacted online
- Incel and manosphere cultures and the so called ‘toxic masculinity’ debate
- Social media, health and wellbeing
- Gender and labour
Cluster members
- Professor John Mercer
- Dr Hazel Collie
- Dr Gemma Commane
- Dr Faye Davies
- Dr Robert Lawson
- Dr Ellie Tomsett
Postgraduate researchers
- Sally Butcher
- Harrison Charles
- Sam Dubois
- Chelsea Harris
- Anoushkaa Kashyap
- Georgina Matuska
- Harry Wylde