Research

Members of the centre have a wide range of research interests and are actively engaged in research both within the UK and internationally.

Our research interests and expertise encompass the following areas:

Feminist theories, epistemologies and methodologies
International development and globalisation including migration and migrant workers, and human rights and violence in international context
Gender, politics and power including feminist social movements and social change, the politics of domestic violence, women and political representation, and gender, nation and democratisation
Gender and employment including embodiment, gender and the labour process, and the connections between paid and unpaid work in the workplace, households and education
Gender and sexuality
Pedagogy, education, and academic practices and cultures
Trans* identity, experience and representation

Families, households and kin relationships including older people, families and care work

Gender, ‘race’/ethnicity and class
Gender, health and illness including professional identities in science and medical care, and ageing
Gender, Technology and Biopolitics including reproductive and genetic technologies, biotechnolgoy, bioethics, embodiment, new health cultures and reproductive politics and governance
Masculinities
Media and Cultural Studies including digital media; gender and internet communities, celebrity and fandom, film television and popular press studies, subcultures and cultural policy

Our research focuses not only on the UK but has an international dimension including the Caribbean and ante-bellum North America, Portugal, Poland, East-Central Europe, India and Japan.

Current Research Collaborations

Partnership with Monash Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research

The Universities of Monash and Warwick have a cross University Alliance, supporting staff and student exchange and innovative international research programs. Graduate student exchange and research programs focused on sustainability and gender and care are underway.

Gender and feminist theory reading group

A reading group based in the History Department, but open to all researchers whose work engages with questions of gender and feminism, providing an informal space for close reading and in-depth discussion of theoretical texts.

Feminist Dissent

Feminist Dissent is a journal hosted by CSWG and the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies which brings together innovative and critical insights to enhance our understanding of the relationship between gender, fundamentalism and related socio-political issues, interrogating the multi-faceted links between historical and resurgent religious fundamentalism and gender.

Past Research Projects and Collaborations

Twilight People: Stories of Gender and Faith Beyond the Binary

A landmark project that discovers and celebrates the hidden history of transgender and gender-variant people of faith in the UK past and present, exploring the narratives around 'body and ritual', documenting the interconnection between faith and gender journeys beyond the binary categories of male and female.

Retheorising Gender and Sexuality: The Emergence of 'Trans'

This is a two year cross disciplinary seminar series exploring the emergence of 'Trans' social movements, social identities and social networks. It will bring together clinical and psychotherapeutic practitioners, clients, educators, academic researchers, community groups and activists to consider three interlinked questions: how does the emergence of 'Trans' challenge, develop or extend dominant understandings of gender and sexuality?; what is the impact of 'Trans' discourse on questions of rights, discrimination and citizenship, health and welfare, education and popular commonsense?; what challenges do 'Trans' identities present for clinical and therapeutic practice, for gender and sexuality theory and for everyday articulations of identity and intersubjective and communal connection.

Gendered knowledges

This strategic project, funded by IATL, explored radical interdisciplinary pedagogies in relation to Gender and Sexuality. It produced several successful research events for postgraduates and staff, as well as a policy document on experiential learning at the postgraduate level.

Assessing the Impact of the Public Spending Cuts on Women in Coventry

CSWG supported the Law Department’s Centre for Human Rights in Practice and Coventry Women’s Voices (a local women’s organisation) in conducting research into the impact of the public spending cuts on women in Coventry. This resulted in the publication of 3 reports:

Retheorising Women’s Health: Shifting Paradigms and the Biomedical Body

This workshop series aimed to launch a multidisciplinary examination of transformations in the conceptual, cultural, clinical and scientific terrain of women’s health in the light of radical shifts in the socio-cultural, political, economic and technological landscape of health politics more generally in the period of late modernity, and in response to ‘third wave’ feminist and women's health studies and theory.

Reconceptualising gender: transnational perspectives

CSWG collaboration with the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University in the Occupied Palestinian Territory - exploring the shifting conceptualisations of gender in different geographical spaces as well as amongst different social groups within the same geographical spaces.

MYPLACE

A 7.9 Million Euro EC funded project, which explores how young people's social participation is shaped by the shadows (past, present and future) of totalitarianism and populism in Europe

Becoming a Channel swimmer

Part of a two and half year ESRC-funded sociological research project, entitled "Becoming a Channel swimmer: identity and embodiment in an extreme sporting culture".

Gender and political processes in the context of devolution

Exploring the relationship between gender and devolution in Wales, looking at both the National Assembly for Wales and Welsh local government - investigating how different gender balances affect policy development and political culture; the engagement of civil society organisations with local and regional government; and whether this engagement is affected by the contrasting gender balances.

Women from Muslim Communities and Politics in Britain and France

The aim of this research is to find out how Muslim women in Britain and France constitute themselves as social and political actors as a result of their interactions within the structural frameworks and political cultures of the two countries.

Bodies of Value

Developing a network of scholars in different departments at the University of Warwick and elsewhere who have been exploring the value of human bodies, whether whole or in parts—as property; as the carriers or targets of labour; as differentiated recipients of state disbursements; as carriers of stigma and status.

Queer Theory Study Group

This group aimed to provide a space for interdisciplinary discussion around Queer Theory and the application of Queer Theory to empirical study.

Research Posters

CSWG regularly organises “Not Very Far Away Days” where staff and students at Warwick can present their ongoing research. This page is an archive of research posters produced for past Away Days.