University of Sussex

Faculty Member, Gender Studies

Director of Gender Studies

About

I have a BA in politics/modern history and an MA in political theory from the University of Manchester, and a PhD in the sociology of education from the University of Cambridge. I previously lectured at the universities of Cambridge and Brighton, and I've been at Sussex as lecturer in Sociology and Director of Gender Studies since October 2005. I'm currently serving as Chair of the Feminist and Women's Studies Association UK and Ireland.

I'm interested in the politics of the body, in particular as they play out around issues to do with gender and health. I'm currently developing a political sociology of issues including sexual violence, childbirth, breastfeeding, abortion and sex work. This focuses on the discursive power of the current Western neoliberal/neoconservative political coalition and how this has produced a marketisation of issues of autonomy and choice, a left-wing moral ambivalence and an individualisation of dissent and critique. Linked to this, it examines current trends towards the politics of identity, emotion and 'authenticity', and how the 'global' figures into Western debates in terms of how 'traditional' cultures are commodified and appropriated as part of middle class healthist agendas. This work will be brought together in a book entitled The Politics of the Body, currently under contract with Polity Press.