Gender and Media research group
- Group summary: The Gender and Media research group brings together colleagues and postgraduate researchers engaged in debates about how gender functions within and through media and communication. This includes approaches to representation, production and audiences.
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Our Research
The Gender and Media research group promotes and offers support to researchers interrogating interdisciplinary debates about how gender functions within and through media texts and cultures. We see media and communication as key sites in the discursive formation of gender, informed by wider ideologies and socio-cultural practices. Approaches utilised encompass diverse theoretical backgrounds converging on gender issues in media representation, production and reception in global contexts.
The group aims to carry out and disseminate research on a wide array of media texts, genres and platforms, while centring discussions about gender and identity within an intersectional framework. Researchers draw from a variety of transdisciplinary approaches, including film, media and cultural studies, historical, sociological, political and philosophical fields, and feminist and queer theories.
The Gender and Media research group encourages cross-disciplinary examinations of:
• The role of media in the construction of gender and gendered ideologies.
• Gender constructions, contradictions contestations and subversions in and around both mainstream and independent media texts.
• Negotiations of gender through digital platforms and participatory media culture.
• The intersections of gender, race, sexualities, nationalities, disability, class and age in the media.
• Commodified, popular and postfeminist configurations of gender across media.
• Feminist research methodologies and approaches to studying gender in the media.
Impact and engagement
The group works to support staff and postgraduate researchers in conducting ethical and impactful feminist research. We organise presentations, seminars, workshops, and discussions of works-in-progress. These incorporate and reflect on questions of research impact involving public engagement, work with external groups, and ensuring greater visibility for issues of gender equality within media cultures.
Academic team
Media contacts
If you require a media expert, contact the University of Leeds Press Office by calling +44(0)113 343 4031 or by emailing pressoffice@leeds.ac.uk.