Genders and sexualities

Exploring genders and sexualities in the everyday

Gender and sexuality are integral to personal life experiences, identities and how we navigate the world. Not only are they personal identities, but they are also concepts that organise society and everyday life.

They influence our relations with others everywhere, whether that is in the workplace, leisure space, at home, travelling or online. Gender and sexualities shape the way that people engage with the world, including the ways in which they interact with heteropatriarchy and LGBTQ+ politics, resist normative pressures of heterosexuality (heternormativity), or navigate the inequalities that emerge as a consequence of both hetero and homonormativity.

Morgan Centre members are interested in looking at genders and sexualities from many different angles to learn and engage with this integral part of everyday life and how people navigate their impact. This has been a long-standing interest of Morgan Centre colleagues from inception and many of us have explored different aspects. For example, Brian Heaphy, Carol Smart and Petra Nordqvist has explored LGBT families' lives, same sex marriages and parenthood through a series of studies.

In more recent years, Liang Ge and Briony Hannell have worked on the interconnections of digital sociology, gender and sexuality. Jess Mancuso is interested in LGBTQ+ people’s experiences of queer social spaces, such as LGBTQ+ bars and nightclub events; and Sophie Atherton has explored young trans and non-binary people’s experience of secondary education in the UK.