Skip to main content
Durham History Department
Student walking outside the Department of History

Gender and Sexuality

This research theme aims to bring together researchers concerned with histories of gender and sexuality of all kinds, and also provides a forum for discussing queer and feminist approaches to history. In practice, staff and postgraduate students at Durham pursue a wide range of topics that intersect with gender and sexuality across time periods and geographies.

Durham historians’ current research interests in gender and sexuality include:

  • age relations and generational change in eighteenth-century Britain
  • class, gender, and the family in Victorian Britain
  • gendered Anglo-Saxon notions of belonging in the early Middle Ages
  • histories of intersectional anti-Apartheid protest movements in South Africa
  • performances of British militarism around the Great War
  • sexual crimes in early modern France
  • transnational queer activism during the Cold War
  • women and collecting in modern Europe

The group is committed to cultivating an inclusive atmosphere for discussion, and we welcome expansion into additional areas in order to reflect the diversity and dynamism of the research theme. As well as providing a space to discuss methods and concepts as well as recently published scholarship and work in progress, the group aims to ensure that the insights of research on gender and sexuality are reflected in our curriculum and pedagogy. We also benefit from interdisciplinary connections across the university, participation in public events such as LGBT+ History Month, and hosting esteemed outside speakers. All are welcome.

Staff