PGR GSS Research Exchange

• ‘Transness and sexuality: ontology, politics and panic from the 1970s to 2000s’, Brell Wilson-Morris, Birkbeck
• ‘Borderlands: from Mexico-U.S. to the ancient Mediterranean’, Naiara Leão, King’s College London
• 'Throwing out the instruction manual' – Twentieth Century girlhood’, Jan Kofi-Tsekpo, Birkbeck

The session will feature informal presentations with generous time for discussion, providing an opportunity to meet new colleagues and share ideas in an informal setting.

Guest researchers:

Brell Wilson-Morris, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication, Birkbeck, University of London. Brell is a third year Chase-funded Phd student who works with historical materials to explore how the relationship between transness and sexuality has been understood at different moments, exploring both sexual politics within trans communities in the US and UK as well as how ideas about sexuality circulate in transphobic discourses.

Naiara Leão, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London. Naiara is a third year PhD student using Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderland Theory to discuss female agency and leadership in the early Christian Church, asking questions related to space and identity. She explores how stories and their storytellers occupy geographical and symbolic borderlands (spaces of encounters) to craft a sense of local history and tradition for Christianity in spaces where it was extraneous.

Jan Kofi-Tsekpo, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London. Jan’s practice-based (Creative Writing) research investigates ways in which short forms of hybrid writing can be used to subvert gendered hierarchies, and the extent to which girlhood narratives expressed through these forms have a particular role to play in developing decolonizing discourse. It involves an exploration of how transnational girlhood narratives across a spectrum of experiences and intersectional identities might act in resistance to an 'expected' presentation of the self or voice.

PGR Research Seminars in Gender and Sexuality Studies are a collaboration between UCL Gender and Sexuality Studies, qUCL, and the Gender and Feminisms Research Network.

Seminars and events will be held throughout the year, based around a series of shared reading workshops but also including public lectures, social events and exchange with other doctoral networks. This will culminate in a student-led qUCL and GFRN  ‘work in progress’ symposium in term 3.

The aim of the workshops are to provide an informal and relaxed opportunity to get to know others, discuss your ideas and exchange experiences. Sessions will be collaborative, co-designed and responsive to the needs and interests of the group.

Interested in more events like this for Early Career Researchers? Register for the IAS Early Career Network Newsletter here and find more information about the Network here.