Research group: Contemporary Intimacies, Sexualities and Genders (CISG)
Challenging how we think about intimate relationships, gender relations, eroticism and sexuality in order to advance social justice.
Summary
About our research
We are an interdisciplinary network of researchers working within sociology, cultural studies, human geography and criminology.
This allows us to create critical and methodologically innovative research on contemporary intimacies, genders and sexualities.
Our work aims to:
- broaden the current conversations about intimacy, sexuality and gender in the contemporary world
- document, explore and interrogate gender and sexuality-based exclusions
- revise taken-for-granted assumptions and challenge multiple oppressions and inequalities
- deconstruct, decolonize, destabilize and denaturalize dominant ideologies about intimacy, sexuality and gender
- support evidence-based practices and policies in advocacy of ethical sexual politics
We are unique and distinctive in broadening conventional gender and sexuality research agendas by:
- including a focus on contemporary intimacies and the different ways in which people conduct their personal lives
- aiming to understand current social transformations within people’s relational and erotic lives
- developing interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives and explanations
Our work addresses five thematic priorities:
- contemporary intimacies and personal life
- inequalities and criminal justice
- media and popular culture
- the body and embodiment, health and sports
- transnational, global and sexuality studies
Sub-groups
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Contemporary intimacies and personal life
We produce novel and path-breaking research on contemporary intimate and family life, with a focus on changes in gender relations and intimate practices. Current research explores:
- LGBTQI+ intimacies and identities
- digital intimacy
- consensual non-monogamy and polyamory
- intimacy within couple relations and families
- young people’s sexual lives
- personal life beyond the couple, including friendship and singlehood
- the impact of global politics, cultural norms and legal practices on intimate and familial practices
- power relations, gender-based inequalities and alternative relationship practices
- emotions, including love, trust and disappointment
- strategies of domination, empowerment and resistance
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Inequalities and criminal justice
Our work exposes and challenges inequalities, state intervention, harm and injustice in social, welfare, work and criminal justice settings. Current research priorities include:
- nursing, social mobility and educational reform
- stratification, with a particular focus on youth and class
- urban and transnational political geographies of sexualities, particularly the sexual politics of Europe
- gendered and racialized processes of marginalisation, criminalisation and punishment
- criminalisation and punishment, including conviction rates for sexual violence
- practices of othering in penal and welfare policies
- the construction of knowledge and ignorance
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Media and popular culture
We undertake influential work in the intersections between media, popular culture, gender and sexuality. Our research focuses on:
- critical engagements with journalism
- the analysis of representations within film, music and social media
- gender in the creative industries and alternative music cultures
- gender equality and work-life balance in TV and film
- parenting and social media
- popular music, place and gender
- media responses to intoxicated female victims of rape
- the online incel movement
- social media and personal life
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The body and embodiment, health and sports
Our research explores the body and embodiment through a variety of cultural practices, namely around health, sports and leisure. We study:
- women’s participation in football and cycling
- hyper-masculinity in bouncer cultures and the night-time economy
- gay men’s experiences of HIV positivity, treatment and prevention
- migration, welfare regimes and austerity
- philosophical debates within phenomenology and ethnomethodology
- methodologies, including participant observation, narrative analysis, and feminist and queer research methodologies
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Transnational and global gender and sexuality studies
We engage in crosscutting research on gender and sexuality in international, transnational and European contexts, and global inequalities, identities and politics. Our expertise includes:
- development policies and material inequalities in the context of neoliberal regimes and global mobilities
- feminist and LGBTQI+ social movements and geo-politics
- gender and sexuality in human rights politics, international diplomacy and within transnational institutions
- mobilities between the global North and the South
- intra-European migrations and their connections with gender and sexual politics, sex, intimacy and eroticism in national and transnational politics
Events
Launch of the CISG research group
A debate about the struggles with difference and diversity in intimate and family practices, and sexual and gender identification and expression.Partners
Organisations we work with
LGBT Foundation
Queer Film Network
The Proud Trust
OnePlusOne
Contact
Contact us
You can contact individual members of the team through their staff profiles.
For general enquiries, please contact our research group leads Dr Christian Klesse and Dr Jenny van Hoof.