ICOSS Centres

Centre for Gender Research

The interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Research was set up in 2006 with support from the Social Science Divisional Research Fund. The network aims to promote interdisciplinary social science research and training at the University of Sheffield. We have more than 50 members who are primarily researchers (staff and students) working in a diverse range of departments and disciplines and who are interested in interdisciplinary gender research in the social sciences and who liaise through the Network's website. Although our membership is predominantly from the Faculty of Social Science, the cross disciplinary nature of gender research means that we also have members in many other departments in the University. Currently CGR members are drawn from more than eighteen departments in three different faculties in the University. In the Faculty of Social Science, these include Politics, Sociological Studies, Education, Law, Psychology, Geography, TRP, EAS, and Economics. And outside of it, members come from: History, Music, Russian, English Language and Linguistics, English Literature, and ScHARR.

Selected recent research

There is a huge range of exciting gender research being carried out in Sheffield. Below is just some of it.

Research on men and masculinities at Sheffield is currently thriving across different faculties. Such research is concerned with the theoretical implications of seeing men as gendered subjects, and also with the epistemological and methodological questions that arise from carrying out work on masculinities, and not least the elationship of this work to feminism. For example, Aki Tsuchiya has carried out research in the Department of Economics and School of Health and Related Research on the reasons why men die earlier than women, asking if this is unfair, or whether this can be seen differently when the question is placed within a feminist framework. In the Department of Economics, and School of Health and Related Research, Katie Mclymont and Paula Meth have recently been concerned with issues of gender and methodology when carrying out work on men.

Masculinity is also being theorised from a historical perspective. Hiroko Takeda, from the School of East Asian Studies has been researching hegemonic masculinity in postwar Japan, whilst Karen Harvey from the Department of History is concerned with reconstructing homosociability in the eighteenth century. In a more contemporary context,in sociological Studies, Jenny Hockey and Victoria Robinson are conducting ESRC funded research on men in different occupations and are especially interested in identity transitions across public and private spheres.

Find out more

To learn more about the Centre for Gender Research please visit the Centre's website at http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/cgr