GenSex

Chair: Dr Mari Hughes-Edwards
Co-Chairs: Dr Emma Deeks & Jess Tillings

The Gender and Sexuality Research Group

The Gender and Sexuality Research Group is an inter-disciplinary group which promotes global research into gender and sexuality studies, launched in 2007.

We meet regularly to hear research papers, engage in debate, and run seminars and workshops on subjects such as: masculinities, feminisms, gender theories, LGBT and/or queer studies, sexuality and subversion, bodily/embodiment narratives and transgendered identities.

The aim of the group is to provide international academics and postgraduate students with a forum for academic debate and to foster intellectual exchange and development. In addition to an annual research paper programme the group also seeks to generate conference events and publications.

Where and when do we meet?

The Gender and Sexuality Research Group meets regularly through the academic year at EHU’s Ormskirk campus and at other locations in Liverpool and London.

Our rooms vary from session to session but you can get details by joining our email list – just email the group chair Dr Mari Hughes-Edwards on edwardsm@edgehill.ac.uk or gensexresearch@gmail.com.

Would you like to present a paper/lead a workshop?

Interdisciplinary research-based presentations are always welcome, as are art installations, film viewings, debates and workshops.

Topics can include masculinities, feminisms, gender theories, queer studies, sexuality and subversion, bodily narratives and transgendered identities.

If you would like to present a paper or lead a GenSex workshop just contact edwardsm@edgehill.ac.uk or gensexresearch@gmail.com

Annual Programme for 2018-19

Annual Programme for 2017-18

Suffragette Symposium

Billy Cowan: ‘Troubling the Troubles and other Queer Theatrical Interventions’

Thursday 16th November, Room M44 in the Main Building of our Ormskirk Campus at 5.15pm.

Through discussion and the reading of extracts from his plays, Northern Irish playwright, Billy Cowan, will look at how he uses the gay experience to ‘queer’ Northern Irish politics and other themes such as religion.

Billy Cowan is an award-winning playwright who teaches creative writing at Edge Hill University. His first play Smilin’ Through won the 2003 Writing Out award for Best New Gay play and went on to be produced by Queer Up North, Contact and Birmingham Rep. It was nominated for Best New play of 2005 by the Manchester Evening News. His last play Care Takers won a Stage Edinburgh Award and was one of The Stage’s Critics’ Choices at Edinburgh Festival 2016.

Amy McCauley: ‘Is a private self possible?’

Thursday 19th October, Room B004 (Business School, Ormskirk Campus), 1-2pm.

GenSex presents poet Amy McCauley, who through interactive poetry performance, image & essays, invites you to consider: Is a ‘private’ self possible? Can we speak in voices which are not in some way already inherently ‘public’? How might a writer tackle ancient and contemporary myths around ‘femaleness’, desire, sexuality and the performing body? Do we ever stop ‘performing’ (as bodily forms, forms of language, gendered forms and sexualities)?

Amy McCauley completed her PhD at Aberystwyth University and won a Northern Writers’ Award (2016). She works as Poetry Editor for New Welsh Review and as Editor of Creative Response for the feminist visual arts website MAI Journal. She is interested in trans-genre writing, auto-frictions and feminisms. Amy’s first collection of poetry ‘Oedipa’ will be published by Guillemot Press in 2018.