Find a research supervisor in sexuality and gender studies

Staff in the College of Arts and Law who supervise PhD/MA by Research in the area of sexuality and gender studies.

Enquiries about PhD Sexuality and Gender Studies in the Humanities (e.g. Cultural Studies, History, Literary/ Film Studies, etc.) should be addressed to Prof. Lisa Downing:

Enquiries about PhD Sexuality and Gender Studies in the Social Sciences (e.g. Politics, Sociology, Psychology, etc.) should be addressed to Dr Emma Foster.

Dr Francesca Berry

Dr Francesca Berry

Senior Lecturer

  • French modernist art, design and visual culture 1850-1940
  • Magazines, exhibitions and mass culture in France 1900-1940
  • Art, the interior and domesticity
  • Edouard Vuillard and the Nabis
  • Femininities and Feminisms
  • Parisian modernisms and modernity

Dr Amy Brosius

Lecturer in Music

  • Singers and Singing Culture, especially Early Modern
  • Early Modern Italian Vocal Music
  • Modal and Rhetorical Analysis of Early Modern Music
  • Feminism and Gender Studies
  • Performance Theories

Dr Shelley Budgeon

Dr Shelley Budgeon

Honorary Senior Lecturer

Dr Shelley Budgeon is an Honorary Associate Professor in Sociology who specializes in gender and feminist theory. Her research analyses the impact of various forces of social change on the constitution of gender relations and the performance of gendered identities. Her expertise encompasses theories of gendered subjectivity; feminist politics; gender, postfeminism and neoliberalism; sexuality and ...

Dr Anissa Daoudi

Dr Anissa Daoudi

Senior Lecturer in Arabic and Translation Studies
Language Co-ordinator for Arabic

  • Translation and new media, with particular reference to the Arabic-speaking region
  • Translation and popular culture
  • Gender and language use in the context of translation

Professor Lisa Downing

Professor Lisa Downing

Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality

  • Sexuality, gender, and feminist studies
  • Medicine and the humanities
  • Modern critical theory (especially ethics, psychoanalysis, queer theory)
  • Criminality and culture
  • Death and culture
  • 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century French thought.

Dr Emma Foster

Dr Emma Foster

Associate Professor in International Politics
College Director of Postgraduate Research

Dr Emma A. Foster is an Associate Professor in international politics. Emma’s research interests include gender and sexuality studies, (de)politicisation and anti-politics, international sustainable development policy and development studies more broadly.

Emma co-convenes the Gender and Feminist Theory Group, a vibrant research group hosted in POLSIS and bringing together academics ...

Dr Elystan Griffiths

Dr Elystan Griffiths

Reader in Modern Languages

  • German literature, history and culture of the 18th and 19th centuries
  • Pastoral and utopian writing
  • German-language cinema, all periods

Dr Deryn Guest

Dr Deryn Guest

Honorary Senior Lecturer

  • Biblical Hermeneutics
  • Gender
  • Sexualities and religion
  • Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex theologies 
  • Ecological hermeneutics

Professor Rosie Harding

Professor Rosie Harding

Professor of Law and Society
Deputy Dean

  • Mental Capacity and Disability Law, especially research involving questions of everyday decision-making, dementia, intellectual disability, powers of attorney, advance directives and end of life decision making.
  • Gender, Sexuality and Law, particularly issues to do with care, family law, discrimination, equality and human rights.

Professor Louise Hardwick

Professor Louise Hardwick

Professor of Francophone Studies and World Literature
AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellow
Associate Fellow, Homerton College, University of Cambridge

  • French and Francophone Literature
  • World Literature
  • Postcolonial Studies
  • Translation in Academia
  • Women's Writing
  • Environmental Humanities

Professor Matt Houlbrook

Professor Matt Houlbrook

Professor of Cultural History

  • Cultural history of modern Britain
  • Histories of gender
  • Sexuality and selfhood

Professor Kate Ince

Professor Kate Ince

Professor of French and Visual Studies

  • Film
  • Women's studies
  • Feminist thought
  • Philosophy
  • Twentieth century and contemporary France.

Professor Monica Jato

Professor of Hispanic Studies

  • The invention of America in the Spanish culture of the exile of 1939
  • Women's personal narratives
  • 19th- and 20th-century Spanish literature
  • Modern Spanish poetry

Dr Iain Law

Dr Iain Law

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy

  • Meta-ethics
  • Applied ethics
  • Philosophy of medicine
  • Ethical theories

Dr Elizabeth L'Estrange

Dr Elizabeth L'Estrange

Associate Professor in History of Art

  • Manuscripts and early printed books, especially Books of Hours
  • Art at the French and Burgundian Courts c. 1400-1600
  • Women as patrons and consumers of late medieval early modern art
  • Text-image relations
  • The querelle des femmes in art and literature

Professor Deborah Longworth

Professor Deborah Longworth

Professor of English Literature
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education)

  • Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Women Writers
  • Modernism
  • The Novel 1880-1940
  • Literature and Visual Arts 1840-1940
  • The Nineteenth and Twentieth Century City

Dr Camilla Smith

Dr Camilla Smith

Senior Lecturer
Head of Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies

  • Sexuality and gender in Weimar Germany
  • Women artists in interwar German art
  • Eighteenth-century Swiss intellectual history and culture;
  • Erotica and censorship
  • Early twentieth-century German intellectual history and culture
  • Text-image relations 

Dr Nicola Smith

Dr Nicola Smith

Associate Professor in Political Science
Deputy Head of Department

Nicola Smith is a political economist working on feminist and queer theory, neoliberalism and austerity, sex work and reproductive labour, and the history of the British body politic.

Dr Ruth Whittle

Dr Ruth Whittle

Associate Professor
HeFI Fellow

  • Narratives of (personal, gendered, professional, national)
  • Pedagogical aspects of teaching and learning
  • The role of mindset and reflection in deep learning.

Professor Jessica Woodhams

Professor Jessica Woodhams

Professor of Forensic Psychology
Head of Research

Jessica is a chartered psychologist and an HCPC registered forensic psychologist. She is the School of Psychology’s Head of Research. Her primary areas of research are policing and sexual offending and much of her research is co-produced with practitioners from UK and international policing and law enforcement. She is the founder of the international academic-practitioner C-LINK ...

Dr Simon Yarrow

Dr Simon Yarrow

Senior Lecturer in Medieval History

Religion and society in the early and central middle ages, religious and political culture, gender and identity.

Modern languages staff research supervision areas