Who we are

My background is in Public Health, Health Promotion and Health Services Research. My research interests include sexual health, digital health interventions at the interface with patients and the public (for health promotion and healthcare delivery), the development and evaluation of complex interventions, and the patient experience of long-term conditions.

I use a wide range of methods and methodological approaches in my research. I enjoy inter-disciplinary and collaborative research, and I'm experienced in co-ordinating multi-institutional research projects.

Current projects include:

Brighton & Hove's Health Counts 2023 Survey

Health Systems Analysis of Barriers and Readiness of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Services in COVID-19 affected areas. I'm a collaborator and researcher on this WHO-funded international study.

Partnerships in the pandemic, and Pilot Evaluation of the Paired app - with collaborators at the Open University, University of Bradford and University College London.

Living Well with Frailty Experiences (LiFE) Study (Co-designing person-centred frailty interventions with community-dwelling older people and health professionals), a collaboration between Brighton, De Montfort and Birmingham City universities - I co-ordinate this study, funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.

Experiences of living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and receiving services in Sussex

Systematic reviews of interactive digital interventions for sexual health promotion and HIV prevention (at UCL)

Completed projects (since joining the University of Brighton)

An investigation of the use of simulated training to enhance clinical leadership skills within the residential care sector - funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing

Investigating ethnic inequalities in sexually transmitted infections (at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Blood-Borne and Sexually Transmitted Infections - UCL & Public Health England)

I am a critical social and community psychologist using discourse analysis and creative methods to look at how people are making sense of themselves and their lives in the context of neoliberalism. Previous research has included participatory work with lived-experience researchers to explore the role of arts in mental health; and a discursive approach to exploring contemporary constructions of happiness and wellbeing.

• Inequalities in health, gender, sexuality and age
• Feminism and new or socio materialist approaches to health and care
• Feminist phenomenology, embodiment, mobile, visual and sensory methods
• Arts, wellbeing and health
• Community health and community nursing and equalities.

I research relational experience in the context of mental health and wellbeing, as such I am interested in themes such as care, reciprocity, in/exclusion, belonging and intimacy. My recent research focuses on LGBTQ+ relational experiences and their role in distress and recovery.

I typically take a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach and use qualitative methodologies especially creative and visual interview methods, mainly drawing. I developed the Relational Mapping Interview (2019, 2020) to capture subjective experience of the complexities of social networks.

I am particularly interested in developing interdisciplinary research. I have a background in the performing arts and also have a masters in Gestalt psychotherapy. I enjoy collaborating with researchers and artists from a wide range of backgrounds with the aim of humanising and enriching our understanding of distress and wellbeing.

Recent and current projects:

• 2020-22: Pathways between LGBTQ migration, social isolation & mental distress: The temporal-relational-spatial experiences of LGBTQ mental health service-users (funded by UKRI via the 'Loneliness, social isolation & mental health' network; PI Zoë Boden-Stuart)
• 2019-20: Intimacy, medication and mental health (pilot funded by University of Brighton; PI Zoë Boden) 
• 2018-19: Feeling sexual inside and out: Bodies and boundaries in forensic mental health (funded by Wellcome; PI Paula Reavey)
• 2017-18: Relationships and relationality in mental health (funded by ISRF; PI Zoë Boden) 
• 2017-18: Psychosis, connectedness and emerging adulthood (funded by Richard Benjamin Trust; PI Zoë Boden)

I am currently interested in exploring people's embodied and emotional relationships with digital data, devices and platforms in everyday places (e.g. home, work, transport and public spaces). I am focusing on the ways different people have different relationships ‘the digital’, highlighting how power continually manifests in and through digital technologies. I use feminist and queer methodological tools that enable an exploration of these issues.

I am also interested in the relationships between violence, vulnerability and embodiment. I am working on a collaborative project with Man Kind UK about men's unwanted sexual experiences (MUSE), exploring the barriers men face when trying to access formal support. 

My research experience is tied together through geographies of gender, sexuality and the body. At Oxford, I conducted research on the precarious lives of young working-class men, exploring the emotional and embodied experience of austerity. My PhD focused on men who use Grindr. I was interested in the ways masculinity, sexuality and desire emerge as queer men learned to use digital technologies for sex, dates and intimacy. As a research assistant at Newcastle University, I worked with LGBTQ+ people at a higher education institute to examine experiences of diversity and inclusion. In collaboration with Barnardo’s, I also worked with year 5 school children in North East England to explore – and challenge – their understandings of masculinity and what it means to be a man.

Lis Bundock's research interests focus on the experiences of LGBTQ+ teachers trainees and teachers in Higher Education and school contexts. Lis also has a strong interest in anti-racist education and is currently engaged in a research study focused on exploring 'Exploring race and ethnicity with students in UK universities'.

Lis is completing Stage 1 of an MRes entitled 'The (im)possible context: What are the lived experiences of gender diverse teachers working within four UK schools?'

In 2017 she completed an MA in Education that focussed on ‘Becoming a teacher and being LGBT: negotiating the heteronormative in primary school contexts’. 

I am interested in children being involved in the criminal justice system, whether it be as victims, witnesses or suspects. My PhD research focused on detecting children’s false allegations, but now I place more of an emphasis on understanding how to avoid children’s false denials. Currently, I am very interested in exploring police interviewers’ experiences of interviewing children about abuse and the role that culture plays in their disclosure. Furthermore, I am also interested in how the perceived social acceptability of certain types of lies affect truth/lie decision-making.

My research interests can, therefore, be summarised as Investigative Interviewing, Interviewing Children and Adolescents, Disclosure of Abuse, and the Deception Decision-Making Process.

Natalie combines epidemiological methods for health services research with a critical approach and qualitative methods. Her interests include the interface between sexual and reproductive health with psychosocial issues, public health, community delivery of sexual health interventions, Point of Care Testing for STIs, problematic substance use and anti-microbial resistance (AMR). Methodologically she is interested in screening tool development, clinical prediction modelling, development and evaluation of complex interventions, the evaluation of public involvement in research, and researching disenfranchised populations. Natalie has been developing a critical epidemiology approach to sexual health research and more recently Trauma and Resilience Informed Research Principles and Practice (TRIRPP). You can read more about TRIRPP here http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/trirpp/.

I started my research career interested in the problematisation of teenage pregnancy and parenthood. Through my PhD research in this area and a subsequent study into support services for young parents my interests have expanded to a number of related areas. This includes; sex education, families, parenting (including parenting 'experts' and policy), motherhood and fatherhood. As a consequence I am now engaged in a project examining the experiences of formula feeding mothers. Nonetheless, I am still passionate about challenging misconceptions about teenage pregnancy and parenthood and am currently  examining the long-term outcomes of young parents. 

I am interested in language in connection with gender and sexuality in Italy/Italian. I study (and have published on) this topic from different angles and methodologies:

• sexist language used to reconstruct the traditional arrangement in Italian society (men/public - women/private) as well as failed and successful attempts to subvert this. 
• inclusive language, i.e. attempts to break the grammatical and social binary.
• insults directed at female politicians.
• violence against women and, more specifically, the gendered crime of femminicidio (femicide) in the parliament, in newspapers and on TV
• conventional messages used by fathers to police (their) daughters' sexuality.

I also published on violence against women in sentencing remarks in England and Wales (with Dr Amanda Potts) and on constructions of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities in YouTube comments (with Dr Mandie Iveson).

I published my first monograph Gender, Discourse and Ideology in Italian in 2019 (Palgrave) and my second monograph is currently under contract, provisional title Feminism, corpus-assisted research and language inclusivity (Cambridge University Press).

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou is international consultant to the 3-years research project “MyGender: Mediated young adults’ practices: advancing gender justice in and across mobile apps” (funded by FCT Portuguese public agency for science, technology, and innovation). Aristea has recently completed the UKRI Innovation Fellowship/AHRC Leadership Fellowship funded research project ART/ DATA/ HEALTH: Data as creative material for health and wellbeing. The project created an innovative and interdisciplinary process that offered new tools, at the intersections of data science with art practice, to approach two key issues in healthy aging and prevention: digital skills and health literacy. In 2021 she also led the project 'Impact of COVID-19 on Arts and Health charities' (funded by UKRI Research England’s Quality-related Research Strategic Priorities Funding (QR SPF) 2020-21). 

ART/DATA/HEALTH followed on from Aristea's research "Critical data literacy, Creative media and Social equality" (funded by Rising Stars, University of Brighton 2017), which focused on big data and citizen engagement. The project run training workshops with community and civil society organisations to advance their digital and data analytics skills. 

In November 2020, Aristea edited the Special Issue Digital Culture meets Data: Critical perspectives, in the academic journal Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, with Dr Helen Thornham. The special issue follows on from the  conference Digital Culture Meets Data: Critical Perspectives (November 2017, University of Brighton) organised by the Digital Culture & Communication Section of ECREA. 

Aristea's research about wearable sensors and about the Quantified Self in San Francisco was published in the online platform Open Democracy and in Health Sociology Review. She edited a special issue in digital media praxis for Ada: Journal of Gender, Technology and New Media, (Issue 5, June 2014, with Alex Juhasz & Kate O'Riordan). She served as Chair of the Digital Culture and Communication Section of European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) (2016-18), as Vice Chair (2014-2016) and as Early-career scholar representative (YECREA) of the section between 2012-2014. 

Her first book Feminist Activism and Digital Networks was endorsed by high profile academics in her field Prof Nick Couldry(London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), Prof Rosalind Gill (City, University of London, UK) and Prof Carol Stabile (University of Oregon, USA). The book was been described as: 

“highly recommended”, “an urgently needed antidote to […] the invisibility of gender and sexuality as embodied practices in communication studies and social movement studies alike”; and deemed as “required reading for social justice classrooms.”  

My work takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on sociology, social psychology, gender studies, education, and cultural studies. I use feminist and creative methodologies and discourse analysis to explore power and inequality in everyday life. My research explores sexualities, gender, class, borders, youth cultures, media representation and consumption, social media and popular culture.

My current research includes research with Olu Jenzen, Carl Bonner-Thompson and Jane Melvin on LGBTQ digital youth work, a project on LGBTQI+ people's experiences in immigration detention and an archive project on sex advice in zines.

Previous work has included working as a researcher on an NSPCC-funded project on youth sexting, an ESRC-funded project on youth aspiration and celebrity culture and an ESRC-funded project on long-term couple relationships. I have co-authored two academic books – one on celebrity and youth aspiration (with Heather Mendick, Kim Allen and Aisha Ahmad) and one on sex advice in media culture (with Meg-John Barker and Rosalind Gill).

My most recent book is a graphic book with Sarah Leaney and Danny Noble which was published in 2022 - Class: A Graphic Guide.

Olu Jenzen is Reader in Media Studies and the Director of the Research Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender. Her research focuses on Digital Culture and Activism, and LGBTQ+ Media Cultures, in particular global visual activism and LGBTQ+ social media youth cultures. She is the co-editor of The Aesthetics of Protest: Global Visual Culture and Communication (AUP, 2020) and a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change, on 'Global Queer and Feminist Visual Activism’ (2022). She has published in journals such as Convergence; Gender, Place and Culture and Social Movement Studies. Advocating socially engaged, human-centred research across both digital media research and gender and sexuality research, her work with young people is participatory and embedded in community environments. She currently leads two projects, a pilot study on LGBTQ+ Digital Youth Work and the Gender Creativity and Community project, researching the impact of community belonging on gender-diverse young people’s wellbeing.

Gothic and Horror Videogames:

A substantial body of Ewan’s research publications explore critical approaches to survival horror videogames, particularly focussing on the Silent Hill series. In this area Ewan has considered issues of narrative, gender and racial representations, ethics, discourses of art, self-reflexivity and immersion. His work on horror games has appeared in Games and Culture, Convergence, Camera Obscura and Gothic Studies.

Ewan has also spoken at conferences and conventions, presenting papers on media paratexts, racial whiteness, psychoanalysis, and analogue remediation in digital games. One of his earliest papers on Silent Hill examined the extent traditional approaches to storytelling, the horror genre and the depiction of women in popular culture can be applied to the videogame. Subsequent studies have explored the depiction of men and masculinity throughout the series, strategies by which the franchise was constructed as a prestige art game, and the ways the games express a self-reflexivity consistent with the horror genre. A recent paper examined Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and its reflection upon processes of memory, trauma and Freudian psychoanalysis.

Ewan’s essay on the relationship between horror videogames and literature was included in a reader on Gothic culture published by Routledge. Expanding upon this paper, Ewan’s current project explores various videogames’ relation to traditions of Gothic literature. Haunting Ground is considered as reproducing early Gothic narratives of helpless maidens, trapped in spooky castles, pursued by nefarious villains. Bioshock continues Gothic fiction’s critique of aristocratic decadence, capitalism, and the corruption of nature through modernity. Gone Home is a haunted house story which echoes traditional Gothic associations between the ghost and lesbian identity. Finally, Night in the Woods represents a more contemporary American example of Rust Belt Gothic.

Children’s Culture:

Ewan also writes on children’s culture, exploring the relationship between film, television and digital media targeted at child audiences. This is a continuation of his PhD analysing the representation and construction of childhood through children's cinema. His work is concerned with the continuities across different forms of media for children, the ways in which such culture reflects dominant ideas about children and childhood, and the pleasures for adults in consuming children’s entertainment. His work also explores relationships between film and television aimed at young people, toys, merchandising, multi-media spinoffs and other ancillary products.

Publications in this area have included chapters on the screen persona of Robin Williams, crossovers between television and digital games in the Dora the Explorer franchise, and the ‘girl power’ politics of The Powerpuff Girls. He has presented academic papers on Toy Story, nostalgia in children’s media, Charlie and Lola, The Lego Movie and the ‘toys to life’ phenomenon. In 2017 much of this work was consolidated in a substantial study, Children’s Media and Modernity, which contains studies of The Children’s Film Foundation, Wallace and Gromit, Hook, Teletubbies, Little Big Planet, the CBeebies website and Disney Infinity.

Most recently Ewan completed a paper on Bronie fandom, animation and child audiences, and the relationship between feminine cultures and Hasbro’s My Little Pony franchise. Ewan is a regular speaker at MLP fan conventions, and in 2014 hosted the first academic conference exploring the 30 year-old franchise, an event which attracted attention from the national press, and resulted in a publication in The Journal of Popular Television. Presently he is working on a paper which deconstructs the events and fan activities at the UK Ponycon, the country’s longest-running MLP fan convention.

Cinema Culture:

In October 2018 the Screen Archive South East acquired an archive of posters, programmes and other documents from the Duke of York’s Cinema in Brighton. This contained records of the films screened at the cinema, dating back as far as the 1980s. Currently Ewan is in the process of collating this material. Of particular interest is the ways printed programmes reveal how films have been curated and presented throughout the decades. These documents provide a record of what films were shown as part of the ‘art house’ bill, along with specialist screenings such as late-night showings, kids clubs, double bills, matinees and other events. They reveal connections between the cinema and other institutions such as film and arts festivals, television broadcasters and live theatre. Ewan is currently in the process of organising a long-term research project to investigate, collate and disseminate this material.

Popular Culture:

Ewan's academic interests also include representations of race, gender and sexuality in popular culture. Of particular concern are dominant identities such as masculinity, heterosexuality and ethnic whiteness, and the ways these are depicted across the media. In this area Ewan has published and presented papers on race and Dexter, Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as heterosexuality in romantic comedy, and concepts of monogamy in science fiction cinema. Recently Ewan published an essay on Battlestar Galactica’s Starbuck in an edited collection on the action woman in popular film and television.

As well as publishing, Ewan is also active in organising and co-chairing academic events, which have included conferences on media technologies, science fiction and memory, and the television show Battlestar Galactica. Between 2011 and 2015 Ewan co-organised a conference series on racial whiteness held at Oxford University as part of an interdisciplinary series of academic events. Since joining the University of Brighton in 2010 Ewan has held conferences and symposia on zombies in popular culture, nostalgia in art and media, and screen fantasy. Ewan also regularly attends non-academic events such as UK Ponycon, Nine Worlds and conventions on horror and science fiction.

My research addresses the implicit background to political and ethical practices. In my current research, I attend to the ontological assumptions in political analyses and imaginaries:

Racism, coloniality and ontology

This research interrogates the turn towards the philosophical concept of ‘ontology’ in attempts to understand relations among nature, materiality, technology, agency, change, difference, and the human. I am especially interested in how contemporary theorisations of racism, migration, borders, and sovereign power often draw – directly or indirectly – upon the concept of ontology. I draw upon decolonial critiques of the history of the concept of ontology, examining the relationships between its emergence and the development of colonial and racist cosmologies. This research explores the legacies of these relationships for contemporary theorising.

In my previous research, the kinds of implicit backgrounds I focused on were historically- and geographically-specific modes of embodiment and affect:

The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, Sexuality, and Gender in Everyday Practice

I have developed innovative theorisations of the affective, bodily and ‘machinic’ background to the micro-politics of everyday life. This research builds on my doctoral study to examine how racialised, ethnicised, sexualised and gendered power relations are enacted and embodied in everyday practice. Theoretically, it is informed by Deleuzoguattarian theories of ‘affect’ and ‘machinism’ to explore new ways of thinking about the relationship between the capabilities bodies have to affect and be affected by one another in specific events and broader historically-specific social and political formations.

Sexual Politics in the SlutWalk

Based on empirical work conducted at SlutWalk marches in 2011 and 2012, this project – a collaboration with Alexandra Fanghanel (University of Greenwich) – considered how anti-rape discourses variously contest, negotiate and reproduce dominant constructions of female sexual subjectivity and embodiment and of gendered inequalities in access to urban public space.

• Consumer behaviour and psychology
• Customer relationship marketing
• Branding
• Family decisions
• Gender and sexuality in marketing
• Cultural dimensions
• Qualitative research methods

Dr Kirsty McGregor is a Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Humanities and Social Science. Her research focuses on domestic and sexual violence and abuse, with a specific focus on victimisation and help-seeking experiences. 

Dr McGregor’s research interests are focussed on the experience of crime and victimisation through an intersectional lens. She is particularly interested in exploring how people experience intimate partner violence, and the ways that age, gender, and sexuality shape their experiences, help-seeking and support needs. Kirsty uses qualitative and mixed methods to explore these issues, and more recently has become interested in participatory and creative methods. Her current research focuses on intimate partner violence experienced by LGBTQ+ people, and men's unwanted sexual experiences.

Dr Chrystie Myketiak examines language in use in order to uncover what its form, function, and structure tells us about interaction, structural inequalities, and culture. Her research interests are in power and justice; gender, sexualities, desire; intersectionality; violence; social norms; sociocultural theories (specifically, feminist and queer theories); mediated communication.

Chrystie's specialist research is in three areas, with each strand combining her general interests. The first addresses talk about sex, sexuality and desire as social forces through the investigation of conversations in a technologically-mediated community; the monograph, Online Sex Talk and the Social World (Palgrave, "Studies on Language, Gender, and Sexuality"), culminates her work in this area. In order to support her writing of this book, the University of Brighton awarded her a Sabbatical Award. Chrystie's second strand of research is an intersectional discourse analysis of texts produced by mass shooters, which focuses on how the desire-centred discourse strategies used by the offenders attempt to legitimate structural inequalities and construct normative identities. This research will be published in the book Discourse, Demand, Desire: An Intersectional Analysis of Mass Shooter Texts (Palgrave). Her third body of research began as a discursive-pragmatic analysis of medical errors and the construction of accountability in medical error news reporting and clinical incident reporting; she is currently expanding her work on accountability in new directions. 

I am an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow based at the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender, where I will be working with Dr Zoë Boden-Stuart. My research interests lie in the intersection of queer theory, psychosocial studies, sexual dissident critique and LGBTIQ+ mental health, with a special focus on depathologising practices.

My ESRC Fellowship further develops the findings of my doctoral research, which critically interrogated what has been called the ‘turn to sexual and gender diversity’ in the psy professions. It did so by exploring how the concept of diversity has been taken up by psy professionals working with LGBTIQ+ people in Chile, asking how the ambivalences and contestations around its uses are expressive of broader psychosocial processes. My doctoral thesis is also an analysis of the ghostly elements that haunt diversity work in the present and that expose the psy professions’ troubling relationship with race, cis-heteronormativity and the past of the Chilean dictatorship.

During the fellowship year, I will explore what a non-pathologising, affirmative and culturally competent approach to mental health means and does for LGBTIQ+ diversity workers within the psy professions. To answer this, I will undertake secondary analysis of existing data from my doctoral study and run two collaborative knowledge exchange workshops with mental health practitioners working with LGBTIQ+ people in three cities of Chile and Brighton, aiming to develop policy recommendations and practice from a non-pathologising and social justice framework. In doing so, I hope to intervene in understanding how a demand for producing more knowledge and evidence about LGBTIQ+ mental health is articulated, who responds to such demand, and through which means. 

In addition to the above, together with Aiko Holvikivi (LSE) and Billy Holzberg (KCL) I am co-editing a book on transnational anti-gender politics (under contract with Palgrave’s Thinking Gender in Transnational Times series). We put together a project based on an ongoing Engenderings’ blog series to explore further the transnational dimension of current attacks on gender, feminism and LGBTIQ+ rights, which travel under the expression ‘anti-gender ideology’, 'anti-genderism' or 'anti-gender identity ideology'. 

Dr Ceren Özpınar is a historian specialising in art, visual culture, historiography and exhibitions in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research focuses on the relationship between gender, identity and art since 1960 with a special focus on Turkey and the Middle East. Ceren's research interests lie in three key areas: Revisiting art histories; investigating transnational feminist alliances in the wider Middle Eastern geography; and an examination of curatorial strategies and discourses of large-scale exhibitions, such as retrospectives and biennials, in the Global South.

Ceren's research has been supported by the British Academy, College Art Association (CAA), the Getty Foundation, Association for Art History (AAH), and the Turkish Research Council (TUBITAK). In 2020, Ceren was awarded a Rising Star, which is one of the University of Brighton's research awards, for her project "Where Matter Meets Memory: Alternative Political Futures in Kurdish Art Today.” Ceren's project investigates creative works produced within the diasporic Kurdish communities.

Publications

Ceren's latest book, a co-edited volume titled Under The Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from The Middle East and North Africa Today, is published by Oxford University Press and The British Academy in 2020 (Read the reviews in Oxford Art Journal, Third Text and Woman's Art Journal). Her first monograph The Art Historiography in Turkey (1970-2010), which stemmed from her doctoral thesis, was published in 2016 by Tarih Vakfi Press. She is currently completing her second monograph, which is also forthcoming with Oxford University Press and The British Academy. This book investigates the relationship between art history and women artists in Turkey, and is building on her Newton research project entitled "Re-visiting Feminist Temporalities in Art and Art History in Turkey from the 1970s onwards" (2015-17).

Ceren's latest articles appeared in the Art Journal, Art in Translation, Art & the Public Sphere, and Third Text. She wrote several essays for edited volumes and special issues on invitation, including Image & Text (ed. Schmahmann), A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework (eds. Jones & Davidson), and Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (eds. Kennedy, Szymanek & Mallory).

My research interests broadly concern issues of inclusivity in the history of art, art museums and art collections, as well as a subject specialization in nineteenth century visual culture with a focus on portraiture. My primary concerns are how gender and related social formations (sexuality, the nation, the modern) organize the production and circulation of visual images. I have applied feminist methods to research on the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries including through a number of collaborations with artists, curators and cultural organizations.

My research focuses on sexualities, LGBT+ literatures and queer cultural production, on the narrativity of identity, and on the cultural construction of childhood and adolescence. Recent projects have focused on bisexual theory, camp, dialogue as theoretical production, discourses of maturity and queer temporalities, and on the intersections between literature, performance and pop. My current projects include an examination of intergenerational friendships, kinship and communication in children’s time-slip fiction, and on queer cultural memory and narrative alternatives to coming out in the fiction and performance of Neil Bartlett.

My research interests are driven strongly by a social justice agenda, along with a desire for research to be collaborative and participatory with demonstrative social impact which ultimately tackles disadvantage and inequalities in health.

I am interested in all areas of research relating to public health and health promotion theory, policy, and practice, especially with an international/global focus. Areas of specific interest and expertise relate to three key areas:

1. Sexual health, sexual orientation, and gender identity
2. Mental and physical health inequalities
3. Parenting (including fatherhood, breastfeeding, and young parents).

Current research projects:

• Health Counts: A city wide health survey of Brighton & Hove
• WHO CV-19: Health systems analysis and evaluations of the barriers to availability, utilization and readiness of sexual and reproductive health services in COVID-19 affected areas.
• Health4LGBTI; Italy and UK health professional training for psychiatry.
• WHO ProSPeRero: Project on Sexually Transmitted Infection Point-of-care Testin - Clinic based evaluation of SD BIOLINE HIV/Syphilis Duo (Alere) and DPP® HIV-Syphilis Assay (Chembio) for the screening of HIV and syphilis in men who have sex with men in the STI screening facilities of Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom (UK).

Previous research projects:

European/International:

• ESTICOM: European Surveys & Trainings to Improve MSM Community Health project. European Commission. Lead for WP6 (ECHOES Survey).
• Health4LGBTI: reducing health inequalities experienced by LGBTI people. European Commission. Lead for WP1 & WP2
• HEPCOM:Preventing obesity among children and young people.
• Everywhere in Japan: HIV prevention for Men who have Sex with Men
• SIALON II: Capacity building in combining targeted prevention with meaningful HIV surveillance among men who have sex with men
• SODEMIFA: Addressing the social determinants of health: Multilevel governance of policies aimed at families with children
• DAIWA: A feasibility study to explore the European Everywhere framework in Japan
• ACTION-FOR-HEALTH: Reducing health inequalities - preparation for action plans and structural funds projects
• GRADIENT: Tackling the Gradient - applying public health policies to effectively reduce health inequalities amongst families and children
• H-CUBE: HBV-HCV-HIV- Three different and serious threats for European young people. A network to study and face these challenges in the EU
• EVERYWHERE Project: A European multi-sectoral network for the prevention of HIV/AIDS for men having sex with men
• TEP: Health Promotion International – Transatlantic Exchange Partnership: EU-Canada
• ECHIM European Community Health Indicator Monitoring Project
• CEIHPAL Canadian-European Initiative for Health Promotion Advanced Learning: EU-Canada
• PHETICE: Public Health Education and Training in an Enlarging Europe
• DETERMINE: EU Consortium for action on the socio-economic determinants of Health
• ENGENDER: Inventory of good practices in Europe for promoting gender equity in health

Local/national:

• Investigating the impact of Covid-19 on local communities within East Sussex.
• A review of alcohol use amongst gender and sexual minorities
• Best Practice in Corporate Occupational Health
• Diabetes UK Community Champions Project Evaluation (DUKCC).
• Exploring a whole-system intervention to improve mental health and wellbeing in schools.
• Evaluation of Care Navigation as part of the Right Person First initiative (CANE - Care Navigation Evaluation).
• FuelPre (Fuel Poverty Reduction Evaluation). Evaluation of the NHS Hastings & Rother Clinical Commissioning Group Healthy Homes Programme.
• Peas Please Veg City project. Listening First: ‘Veg on a Budget’Evaluation of the Education, Training, Volunteering & Employment (ETVE) Project for People Living with HIV (PLWHIV).
• Older people living with HIV in residential care homes. Extension to the Education, Training, Volunteering & Employment (ETVE) project.
• A better understanding what makes for effective conversations about alcohol between parents & their 15-17 year olds. Drinkware.
• Healthy Hastings & Rother Programme: Developing an evaluation methodology. Hastings & Rother CCG.
• Engaging fathers to support breastfeeding
• Engagement with young people to inform health improvement commissioning for children, families and schools in East Sussex
• Analysis of the Better Beginnings consultation in East Sussex
• Engaging and supporting fathers to promote breastfeeding: A concept analysis
• An evaluation of services for young people in East Sussex: FE nurse provision at schools and colleges, pulse innov8, and the young men’s health worker service
• The perspectives of fathers on the development of a breastfeeding support pack
• Understanding the service needs of routine and manual smokers working on building sites in Tower Hamlets
• Fathers’ views on breastfeeding in Brighton and Hove
• The Sussex LGBTU Training and Development Research Partnership
• The West Sussex LGBTU Youth Research Project and LGBTU Launch Event
• Review of Brighton and Hove WHO Phase IV Healthy City Programme
• The effectiveness of an innovative digital-Story intervention aimed at reducing binge drinking among young people
• Evaluation of fpa’s ‘Speakeasy’ course for parents
• Supporting young fathers: examples of promising practice
• Promoting health and emotional wellbeing: accredited training for supported housing staff working with young people
• Communication and supervision about alcohol in families
• Determinants of sport and physical activity amongst young women: a secondary analysis
• Evaluation of the community sport and enhanced PESSCL pilot programme,
• Speakeasy parenting fund evaluation: supporting professionals working with young people around sex and relationships

#TheDarkSideOfOccupation

The Dark Side of Occupation is a concept I created and am working on developing. This means I aim to continue to research aspects of occupation, and of people's subjective experiences of occupation, that have previously been ignored or extremely under-explored. 

My PhD was an endeavour to do just this, as I researched the impact of woman-to-woman rape. This is a complex form of sexual offending; victim/survivors are invisible and silenced and, as I found, often cope alone or with very little support.  

My interests are based upon my belief that it is no longer acceptable to ignore all of the occupations that people subjectively experience and that can impact upon their health and/or their well-being - be it in a helpful or a detrimental way. The range of occupations we should consider ranges from the everyday, mundane right through to the more extreme, perhaps risky and illegal.  

My doctoral work has really ignited an interest in further exploring the impact of trauma and the associated ways in which people can action resilience, survival, and identity renegotiation through a range of occupations that could be considered by some as 'adaptive' or 'maladaptive'. Though, occupation is more complex than any such binary distinction, as the subjective experience can alter or transform in response to, or because of, various factors that impact upon human occupation.  

In line with this aim to gain a more authentic understanding of human occupation, I identify as a Feminist Auto/Biographical researcher, meaning I concur with Letherby (2014, p. 45) that "research is informed by auto/biographical experience and is an intellectual activity that involves a consideration of power, emotion and P/politics".  

Funding Applications Awarded 

• 2021 - Awarded seed funds from Centre for Arts and Wellbeing, University of Brighton 
• 2021 - Awarded 'seed grant' funds from Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, Australia (as external Co-Investigator on team project with Dr Daniela Castro de Jong as Chief Investigator).  
• 2021 – Awarded seed funds from CORE Transforming Sexuality and Gender (CTSG), University of Brighton 
• 2019 - Awarded pump-priming funds from Institute of Health & Community, University of Plymouth  
• 2019 - Awarded funds from Continuing Professional Development Grants Panel, Elizabeth Casson Trust 
• 2013 - Awarded funds from Social Science Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), University of Plymouth 

Other Scholarly Awards 

• 2022 - Journal of Occupational Science. I am proud to have supported Rachel Rule by co-authoring our paper Developing an occupational perspective of women involved in sex work: A discussion paper. Rachel was the recipient of the 2021 Wilcock Award for Emerging Authors for: 1) Excellence/innovation of the topic, 2) Contributes to the advancement of occupational science, 3) Well-crafted writing. 

Current Research

• Narrating Difference (CoI) - the Narrating Difference study explores the experiences of sex and gender variance in UK healthcare and legal settings with Dr Evan Hazenberg and Dr Maria Moscati.
• Health4LGBTI - Italy and UK health professional training for psychiatry.

Former Research

• LGBT+ Drinkaware (PI) - a systematic scoping review of alcohol use amongst gender and sexual minority people with Prof Catherine Meads, Prof Nigel Sherriff and Dr Kay Aranda.
• Health4LGBTI (CoI)- "Health4LGBTI: Reducing health inequalities experienced by LGBTI people" explores the impact of social determinants on the health and healthcare inequalities of LGBTI people with Prof Nigel Sherriff, Dr Nick McGlynn, Alex Pollard and the Health4LGBTI consortium, funded by the European Commission. The political aim of this work is to address the causes of inequalities  experienced by minority groups. The output informs health service development and delivery for those who lead non-normative lives by acknowledging gender and sexual plurality. The research included developing a training programme for health professionals to address the specific health needs of LGBTI people.
• Covid-19 stories - investigating the impact of Covid-19 on local communities within East Sussex with Dr Alex Sawyer, Prof Nigel Sherriff and Dr Lester Coleman.
• Mental Health Practitioner Role Evaluation (CoI) - a critique of discourses shaping mental health practice with the introduction of innovative roles such as the mental health practitioner role in Hampshire, UK with Dr Joanne Brown and Dr Lucy Simons. This initiative was designed to address workforce shortages in contemporary mental health practice.
• Analysis of the Discursive Construction of Gender (PI) - evolving from mental health practice, a critical discourse analysis aimed to understand the discursive construction of gender, in post-apartheid South Africa. This work questioned normative formations of gender and made visible how cultural and social change occurs, where gender identity, gender expression moved beyond binary formations towards gender plurality.

My work is rooted in the disciplines of Social and Community Psychology, with a transdisciplinary ethos. During my PhD, I focused on group dynamics in the steering committees of grassroots social movements, namely the Transition Towns movement in Monteveglio (Italy). My PhD, and my work with local communities, focused on the communities’ actions to face the effects of the global crisis, particularly promoting economic and social resilience. By facilitating communities’ development and environmental sustainability, I studied and worked on a range of issues including: peak oil, climate change, people and environmental care, social justice and fair share, community engagement and social inclusion.

A major research focus of mine is Discursive Psychology. In particular, I have been studying the religious ideological discourse of the Roman Catholic Church on LGBT+ people. I have applied Discourse Analysis to detect and understand homophobia and heterosexism, and I have analysed its manifestations in different contexts, from religious documents to high school settings. This is enhanced by my simultaneous participation in national and international LGBT+ networks, through taking part in talks, workshops, and conferences.

Finally, I am interested in non-clinical approaches to mental health, and the value of space in shaping people’s social identities.

Abby Barras is a doctoral researcher based in the School of Applied Social Science at the University of Brighton. Her research explores what the participatory experiences of transgender (including non-binary) people are in everyday sport and physical exercise in the UK. Her research draws on trans feminism and queer theory, sociological discussions about the body and embodiment and sports sociology. Her research, which engages directly with transgender (including non binary) people, asks what barriers people may (or may not) be facing when accessing sport, and looks to place these stories centrally and make recommendations for greater inclusivity. 

Max's research interest's look's at a children's experience within gender creative parenting, as they are the most critical aspect of this parenting. In short, gender creative parenting is a new phenomenon where parents do not assign a gender at birth, use they/them pronouns and create an environment away from gender socialisation as much as possible for their children. Reestablishing contemporary theoretical research within the debate of discourse and gender, setting a new position within the 20th century, which is sure to extend far into the future. 

Isabel Duarte is a PhD candidate at the University of Brighton. Her current research engages with the intersections of graphic design history, feminist methodologies and decolonial studies of cultural production, with a focus on Portuguese graphic design history and Portuguese social context. Her doctoral research, with the working title, ‘Beyond the canon: Feminist revision of graphic design history in twentieth-century Portugal' aims to uncover and reframe the history of women graphic designers in Portugal, through the identification of figures and groups who have been ignored by the canon, documenting their practices through a combination of oral history, social context and historical or pedagogical perspectives, and in so doing exploring the factors which have caused their work to be overlooked.

This research is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.

Isabel Duarte has a degree in Communication Design and has completed a Masters in Editorial Design on the subject of self-publishing and critical discourse on graphic design. 

H's PhD explores the ways trans people experience sex. Trans is commonly understood as misalignment between the sexed physical attributes of the body, and one’s internal sense of gender. Medical and social discourses make use of the ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative to produce an understanding of trans experience as psycho-pathology (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) that renders trans experiences of fucking as problematic, static, and fixed. This project instead shows trans people are a heterogeneous populous who experience gender, sexuality, and bodies in myriad ways. The project weaves together my autophenomenoghraphic personal experiences as a trans sexual agent, alongside intimate and creative encounters with six other self-identified trans people to generate ‘data’ which illuminates the diverse and complex ways in which we experience sex and sexuality.  Trans bodies and sexualities are navigated using a variety of tools: the use of language to reframe materiality, temporary and permanent bodily modifications, intention-setting and the queer act of asking to be seen, and of alternative sexual practices such as BDSM, tantra, and roleplay, for example. The findings generated will make visible alternatives to the hegemonic discourse of being ‘born in the wrong body’ and demonstrate tools and practices which mediate trans sexual embodiment. This may inform services for trans people, updating therapeutic discourses within psychotherapy and trans healthcare, and may serve as an empowering experience for those involved. Positioned within Trans Studies, which since its inception is a transdisciplinary field, this project challenges binarist debates within queer, feminist and psychology scholarship. The New Materialist concept of ‘assemblages’ eschews the essentialist/constructionist impasse by attending to both the material body with all its felt subjectivity, and the cultural and discursive production of bodily intelligibility, not as distinct categories, but as interdependent, dynamic and reciprocal processes.

My PhD project, Inventing Kinship: a participatory art exploration of kinship with queer migrants in Brighton is an interdisciplinary project distributed between human geography, queer kinship and the arts, exploring practices and expressions of queer kinship among queer migrants through participatory creative methods.

My PhD research looks at the queer affects, practices and relations found in rural areas, and is based in both the School of Humanities and the School of Environment and Technology at the University of Brighton.

Academic understandings of sexuality often privilege urban centres as places where queer sex flourishes, which builds the assumption that sex must be visible and performed in order to be understood. My research challenges this metronormative link between ‘urbanity’ and ‘sex’. Instead, I explore ‘grey’, less-visible areas between sexual and non-sexual, somewhere and nowhere, and assert the queerness of non-metropolitan, ‘green’ areas.

My research interests can be categorised into 3 areas, all of which I approach using queer theory:

Asexualities and Nonsexualities

What can asexual people, communities and experiences teach us about sex, sexuality, desire and gender? Asexual people do not experience sexual attraction to others. Their livelihoods, perspectives and politics can therefore help us to critique systems of social and sexual control, like compulsory heterosexuality for example. I am interested in exploring the relations that people who do not experience sexual attraction have to 'sex' as a social function of power.

I'm also interested in understanding 'nonsexual' ways of being, and uncovering their radical politics. Unlike asexuality, all people engage with nonsexual ways of relating and feeling. What happens when we understand friendship, romance or even loneliness as nonsexualities?

Rural Queer Studies

The countryside is often seen as a place that lacks queerness, or at least opportunities through which to live queerly. Even so, many queer people continue to live in rural areas. In fact, non-metropolitan space plays host to some very deviant and dissident sexualities and experiences, whose queerness remains underappreciated.

I'm currently researching how one can respond to this tendency, and am doing so by studying queer relations, affects and identities in one rural area in SW England. I question the dominance of 'lack' and 'absence' in defining rural queer space, and am working towards new ways on conceptualising 'rural queer'.

Feminist, Queer, Spatial and Critical Theory

My interest in theory is wide-ranging but is most powerfully informed by queer theory. My research attempts to queer concepts and learn from the margins, but it is also informed by intersectional and abolitionist feminist thinking, as well as poststructural and postmodern understandings of space, place and philosophy. As such my research has previously engaged with: Butler, Foucault, Haraway, Massey, Halperin, Sedgwick, Halberstam, Ahmed, Lorde, Deleuze and Guattari.

I'm a linguist interested in gender-inclusive language, epicene pronouns, corpus linguistics, and second language acquisition. My research project is focused on how epicene pronouns are used in speech and writing by English as an Additional Language speakers. 

My PhD research is funded by the ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership.  I am investigating the outcomes for TV participants who feature in mental health interventions within factual television programmes.  This could be therapy such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or other activities like exercise, singing or decluttering. Examples of these kinds of programmes include The Vertigo Road Trip (BBC1) and The Hoarder Next Door (Channel 4).    My research integrates theoretical frameworks from psychology, media and cultural studies, to analyse in-depth interviews with ex-TV participants, producers and therapists.  The aim is to better understand what makes participation successful, and what the challenges may be with a view to establishing good practice when working with participants with mental health issues.  In addition, this research provides a unique lens to consider psychosocial factors that influence the success of the therapeutic outcomes for participants involved, with wider relevance to other mental health initiatives and clinical practice.

My interest in these issues stems from 12 years of experience working in UK factual TV production -  filming skin graft operations, daredevils jumping out of balloons, and parenting interventions amongst other things.

My thesis, On Being Equally Different, concerns the theoretical relations between the concepts of 'equality' and 'difference'. I critically examine the 'politics of difference' and 'diversity politics', both of which treat 'difference' and/or 'diversity' as a principal normative value; over other values, such as equality. Theorists within these traditions have offered a critique of equality for undermining difference by predetermining the criterion by which social groups are admitted within an egalitarian ideal. Whilst taking this critique seriously, defending difference or diversity for their own sake is problematic, if not self-defeating. I argue that a revised conception of equality is needed to do sufficient justice to difference and diversity, and must precede them as an ethical commitment.

In addition to my thesis, I am interested in the history of gay & lesbian studies and queer theory; sex and sexuality; and post-Marxist politics.