People

Staff

Dr Patricio Simonetto 

Director of CIGS

Associate Professor in Gender and Social Policy

I joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy in 2023. Before coming to Leeds, I was a Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow at the Institute of the Americas at the University College London and a researcher (lecturer) at the National Council of Science and Techniques of Argentina.

My scholarship engages with questions about how sexuality intersects with health, science, and social movements in Latin America. I explore questions such as how sexuality reshaped notions of whiteness in Latin America, how the medical portrayal of LGTB+ and sex workers' bodies shaped notions of sex and sexuality, how LGTB+ movements produce social theory, and how queer and trans people create scientific knowledge and technologies.

Dr Megan Robertson

Acting Director of CIGS

Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy

Megan Robertson is a scholar specialising in queer and gender studies in religion. She was previously a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, based at the Centre for Religion and Public Life at the University of Leeds. She earned her PhD from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, in 2020. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, and Christianity in Southern Africa, and she has published extensively in these areas. She participates in international networks in the field through her role as co-chair of the Religion and Sexuality Unit in the American Academy of Religion.

Professor Karen Throsby

Immersion by Karen Throsby

Professor of Gender Studies

I am Professor of Gender Studies in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, and previously directed the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS). My research focuses on the intersecting fields of gender, technology and the body, which I have explored across a range of site including the new reproductive technologies, the surgical management of weight and extreme endurance sport. I teach at all levels in the area of feminist theory, methodology, the sociology of health and illness and feminist science and technology studies.

Professor Ruth Holliday

Professor of Gender and Culture

I have been working at the Centre for Gender Studies since 2002, first as Director of Studies and then as Director until March 2011. I was made Professor in February 2008. Before Gender Studies, I worked in Cultural Studies, Sociology, Business Studies, and, initially, electronics so interdisciplinarity is a key feature of my academic career!

Professor Kim Allen

Professor in Social Inequalities

An interdisciplinary feminist researcher, my work is located at the intersections of youth studies, sociology, gender studies and the cultural studies of education. Broadly, my research falls into four overlapping areas: youth transitions and inequalities of gender, social class, race and place; young people’s cultural practices; representations of class and gender in popular culture; and inequality and diversity in the creative and cultural industries.

Dr Jessica Martin

Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy

I joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy as a teaching fellow in September 2019, after completing my PhD at the University of Leicester. I am interested in feminist cultural studies, and specifically the relationship between postfeminism and austerity. At a time when women have been shown to be disproportionately impacted by austerity, my research explores how feminism and domestic cultures have responded to this inequality in varying but consistently political ways. I am particularly interested in how postfeminism achieves and sustains its hegemonic position within popular culture. Additionally, my research explores contemporary celebrity culture, with a particular focus on the class and gender politics that arise here.  I am currently a member of the Cultural Studies Association and I am assistant editor for the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

Dr Bethany Robertson

Lecturer In Sociology and Social Policy

My research focuses on gender in agriculture, incorporating the fields of gender, body and identity and rural sociology. My PhD research examined the relationship between gender identities and inequalities by speaking to women farmers in England about their experiences of being situated within a traditionally masculine industry. Drawing on this, my teaching and research addresses ethnographic and feminist methodologies with a specific interest in reflexivity, positionality and conducting research on the move.

Dr Yen Nee Wong

Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy

A queer feminist researcher working at the intersections of media and culture, gender, sexuality, sociology of the body, queer theory, sociology of dance, online harms and citizen attitudes towards AI technologies.

I have published on issues including: representations of gender and sexuality in popular culture, LGBT+ identities and leisure, embodiment and AI-driven media personalisation. Based on research funding by the ESRC, my monograph Equality Dancesport: Gender and Sexual Identities Matter was published by Routledge in 2024. A particular focus of my work is how LGBT+ identities influence leisure pursuits and media representations of LGBT+ dancers on reality TV.

I have worked on a range of research projects, including: ‘3PO: Protecting public-facing professionals and their dependents online’ (EPSRC); ‘Citizens’ councils on data-driven media personalisation’ (AI4ME). My key interests in these projects pertain to digital sociology, online harms and algorithmic discrimination.

Dr Andrea Hollomotz

Associate Professor In Sociology and Social Policy

Professor Richard Cleminson

Professor in Hispanic Studies

I am Professor of Hispanic Studies and work at the intersection between Gender and Sexuality Studies and History with a particular interest in how science and culture interact in Iberia. I have published on scientific and sexological theories of sexuality, particularly with respect to the cultural and scientific construction of male homosexuality in Spain, hermaphroditism in Iberia and the reception of eugenics in Spain and Portugal.

I'm a historian working on everyday life, emotions, intimate relationships, and families in twentieth-century Britain - and so gender, sex and sexualities are threaded through all of my research, and my teaching. I use collaborative research methodologies along with archival research, such as working with family historians. I also do lots of work with partners outside the academy. My current research focuses on the relationship between the living and the dead within families.

Professor Jay Prosser

Professor in Humanities  

Jay is driven by how we can connect personal stories with cultural history, in order to answer some of the big questions of our time. He has written and edited several books, on topics from transsexual life stories, to atrocity photographs. He has led a number of award-winning international research projects, which have given him the opportunity to collaborate with artists, musicians, journalists, and many cultural and charity organisations. His current research is in Jewish studies, but he is interested in exploring how trans studies has changed as field.  

Professor Helen Finch

Professor of German Literature

Helen is currently working on projects exploring queer experience and the Holocaust, and on a larger project on queer memory in contemporary German literature. She's interested in how new German literature constructs memory drawing on queer aesthetics, and also how queer memory is mobilised to create communities of resistance in a time of resurgent fascism and climate emergency. She has published widely on German literature, including a monograph, Sebald’s Bachelors: Queer Resistance and the Unconforming Life on queer themes and aesthetics in the writings of acclaimed German writer of memory W. G. Sebald. 

Dr Nichola Jones

Nichola is a research and teaching fellow in the Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development. Her research focuses on the ways in which participatory video can support public health promotion, with a particular focus on the gendered behaviours that drive antimicrobial resistance at the community level. This works seeks to unpack gendered power dynamics within communities, as well as identify potential solutions to the overuse and misuse of antimicrobials in low-income settings.

Francis Poitier is a teaching and research fellow in international health at the Nuffield Centre for

International Health and Development. His teaching and research interests include island food systems, the politics of health and applying gender and intersectionality lens to health outcomes.

Dr Amy M Russell

Dr Amy M. Russell is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. She has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. Her research focuses on addressing health inequalities in health services and health research, especially for people with a learning disability. Her current research, funded by Wellcome and NIHR,

and collaborating with the HRA and MRC-NIHR Trial Research Methodology Partnership, aims to improve inclusion in applied health research for under-served populations with a particular focus on people with a learning disability. She works closely the WHO Disability Team, collaborating on the Global Report on Health Equity for People with a Disability 2022 and is the PI on an AHRC interdisciplinary Network to explore the role of arts and humanities methods to improve sexual and reproductive health care for women with disabilities.