Research projects
Ongoing projects
Antiquity, Sexuality and Film Stardom – Dr Michael Williams
Southampton’s Dr Michael Williams has been working on film stardom, and its relationship to the myth and iconography of ancient Greece and Rome for over fifteen years. Sexuality has a consistent theme of his ongoing research and publications, which includes work on gay stars and directors, as well as sexuality in the heritage film. Read more…
“Exiles of Love”: Lída Merlínová and the World of the Czech Lesbian – Prof Mark Cornwall
Homosexuality in Czech culture and society is only recently being explored by Czech historians and usually the focus is on the homosexual male. This research project focuses instead on Czech lesbians during the period 1918-1945 and especially the work of the popular (yet now largely unknown writer) Lída Merlínová. Read more…
New models of poetry community – Prof Peter Middleton
Poets have always tended to form communities, and since the early twentieth-century this has become the norm. The absence of market value for this art-form means that poets can often only survive through the mutual support of each other as readers, editors and publishers. Between the mid-1940s and the 1970s, two largely independent groups of mostly gay male poets in New York and San Francisco began to develop a poetics based around their experience of community. Read more…
Sodomy and Dishonour in Eighteenth-Century Hampshire – Dr Julie Gammon
The history of homosexuality eighteenth-century England has been so far dominated by fascinating studies of the rich array of London resources. Perceptions of same-sex sexual activity in the provinces, in contrast, has been relatively overlooked. Read more…
The Life and Trial of Maria Duran – Dr Francois Soyer
One of Dr Francois Soyer’s research interests focuses on ideas about gender and sexuality in the early modern Iberian world (Spain, Portugal and their respective empires). He is particularly interested in the responses and reactions to female homosexuality. Read more…
The Pet Shop Boys, Gay Sexuality and the Knowingness of Popular Culture in 1980s and 1990s Britain – Dr Eve Colpus
This project is an attempt to rethink gay culture in late twentieth century Britain, moving away from the notion of gay community towards an understanding of how gay sexuality and culture was both part of mainstream popular culture and took it in distinctive directions. Read more…
Treason and Sex: The Case of Colonel Redl – Prof Mark Cornwall
The case of Colonel Alfred Redl, who betrayed Austrian military secrets to the Russians before the First World War, is one of the most notorious cases of high treason. Despite this, and despite numerous academic and popular works about Redl, the homosexual dimension of the case has received little treatment (or has constantly been distorted and simplified by commentators). Read more…
Kiss Your Comrades – Jenn Shaller
Southampton PhD student Jenn Shaller is working on Kiss Your Comrades, a short story collection which seeks to creatively inhabit trans queer perspectives in both form and content. The collection deals with three major themes: gender, neurodivergence, and queer intimacy — specifically friendship and community. Read more…
Completed projects
Southampton’s Hidden Past and Present: An Oral History of the Gay Community – Dr Sebastian Buckle
This thesis concentrates on examining how images and representations have shaped a discourse on homosexuality, and how, in turn, this has shaped a gay and lesbian social and group identity. It explores the political, media, and social spheres to show how at any point during this period, images of homosexuality and identity were being projected in society, contributing to public ideas about sexual identity. Read more…
Geographies of carework in contemporary England: the domestic lives of LGBT couples – Dr Carla Barrett
Traditionally, unwaged carework has been thought of as a female activity that belongs within the spaces of the family home. Social research into unwaged carework has tended to focus on gendered divisions of labour within heterosexual couples. This project considers unwaged carework in contemporary England, with a focus on the experiences of cohabiting LGBT couples. Read more…
Sexual orientation and unconscious vision – Dr Nick Hedger
The research project is focused on how our visual system prioritizes biologically relevant stimuli (stimuli that signal potential threat or reward). In particular, we are interested in the extent to which this prioritization occurs in the absence of conscious awareness. To investigate these questions, we use a range of physiological and psychophysical techniques. Read more…
Women travellers exploring gender in the Canadian North at the beginning of the 20th century – Ms Laurence Georgin
This PhD research looks at British women who travelled to the Canadian North at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly women who travelled on their own or with a female companion. Very much like their male counterparts had done for centuries, these women travelled to Canada in order to discover new territories and explore unfamiliar places. Read more…