Gender and Social Life

This group has developed gender and feminist theory to set the agenda for third-wave feminism.  A particular strength of the group is the exploration of the inter-relationship of gender with class, sexuality, religion and race, with empirical studies in the fields of sexuality, the body and medicine, law and human rights, politics and the economy. The analysis of masculinity is a distinctive feature of the group. There have also been sustained engagements with prominent contemporary thinkers, providing new tools for the analysis of gender. The combined effect of this work has been to replace static, universalistic understandings of gender with more fluid, situated and partial analyses that demonstrate the centrality of gender processes to the ordering of contemporary social life. Members of the group have made significant contributions to feminist methodology and methods, including studies addressing the dynamics of reflexivity and diffraction, and the relations between epistemology and ontology. Members of the group jointly organise the interdisciplinary seminar series Feminism and Theory (past speakers include Berlant, Braidotti, Brown, Butler, Carby, Diprose, Fraser, Haraway, and Spivak), as well as international conferences.