Sexualities

(formerly Persons and Sexuality)

This research and publications project seeks to explore issues of sex and sexuality within the context of persons and interpersonal relationships and across a range of critical, contextual and cultural perspectives. How do we understand the different desires and pleasures that people engage in, and by which they define who they are and how they interact with others? How do we conceive of and make sense of different sexualities beyond simple and often flawed notions of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ or ‘deviant’ or ‘paraphiliac’? What is at stake when we discuss sex and sexuality in the context of embodiment and the material (and messy) physicality of sex play? How do desires, identities, behaviours and practices interplay in sexual expressions in contemporary life? What challenging questions do we face in researching and theorising about sexuality in the 21st Century.

Among the themes which the project will seek to explore are;

1. Sexual Spatialities
2. Bodies and Desire, Lust and Sex
3. Sex in the 21st Century
4. Love, Relationships, Detachment and Sex
5. Uncomfortable Territories
6. Narrative, Aesthetic and Creative Representations
7. Identity Politics: Recognition, Citizenship and Rights

These are indicative themes; as the project develops, further areas of research will be added for exploration and examination.