Chloe Dominique

UCL Email: chloe.dominique.13@ucl.ac.uk
Websites: https://ucl.academia.edu/ChloeJDominique
Year of start: 2019
Supervisors: Dr. Ludovic Coupaye (primary), Dr. Victor Buchli (second)
Subject: Material culture practices of LGBTQ+ sex workers in London
Fieldsite: London, U.K.

PhD Research

Queer sex work(er): Identity as Praxis

This project addresses the social and identity-making elements of LGBTQ+ individuals working in the sex industry in London. This research aims to explore the experiences of queer sex workers in London. The body of work will start from the theoretical (and methodological) position of centring and materialising the influence of bodily techniques on the emergence of sexual subjectivity. I begin with the question, what is the role of bodily techniques in the construction and emergence of a queer sexual subjectivity?’, which seeks to explore what techniques of the body do to the self. This work then delves into the complexities that arise in the case of queer sex workers, whom engage in commercial sex with cis-heterosexual men (amongst others), whilst maintaining a sexual, and political identity, of queer. It is the tension between theory and practice of identity politics that I am interested in here, and the material practices that queer sex workers engage in as they seek and actualise particular configurations of personhood, and by extension, how particular configurations of the body politic – the Queer Sex Worker – emerge.

Research interests

• Anthropology of techniques
• Anthropology of the body
• Intersubjectivity
• Gender and sexualities
• Biomateriality
• Anthropology of work

Presentations & Conferences

• Dominique, C. (2018). ‘Scholarship boy: microstories of the uprooted and the anxious’, ASA18: Sociality, matter, and the imagination: re-creating Anthropology. University of Oxford, 18-21 September.
• Dominique, C. (2019) ‘Techniques of the body as techniques of the self: taking sex seriously’, Talking Bodies 2019. University of Chester, 10-13 April.

Education History

• BSc Anthropology, 1st class (hons) University College London, (2013-2018)
• MRes Anthropology, Distinction, University College London, (2018-2019)

Honours, Awards & Funding

Current research funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP).

Additional Information

Chloe Dominique is an anthropologist of the material cultures of sex at University College London. Her work focuses on the material culture practices of LGBTQ+ sex workers in London. She is the founder of the Materialities of Sex Research Group, which invites cross-disciplinary academics, artists and interested persons to explore themes of identity politics, material cultures, ethics, social morality and the legal frameworks of sexual practice.