Gender, Sexuality & Law

Research in Gender, Sexuality and Law analyses the role of law in constructing femininities and masculinities through the regulation of embodiment, intimacy and care. GSL work adopts a critical socio-legal perspective by investigating rights struggles and representations of law on their own terms and as they interact with legal doctrine, public policy and legal theory.

Since the 1990s members of the Law School, and now the Centre for Law, Ethics and Society, have come together to explore and develop shared research interests in gender and sexuality as sites and concepts of legal regulation. GSL members have researched legal sites of gender and sexuality through work on marriage and relationships, abortion, sex selection and reproduction, education and the legal profession, land reform and post-disaster reconstruction, sex trafficking, monstrosity, circumcision, organ transplants, food and animal politics, and consciousness and media. Members have advanced critical understanding of gender and sexuality as concepts of equality and social justice, and of local, national and international legal relations.

GSL provides postgraduate education and research training through PhD supervision, the LLM in Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights, and collaborative initiatives such as PECANS (Postgraduate & Early Career Academics Networks of Scholars). GSL research culture is sustained through a thriving programmer of research events, visits and exchanges, which have been supported by funding from the AHRC, the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy. Further information on the activities of the GSL group can be found here.