About

Feminist Boys Studies Research Group

About the group

The Feminist Boys Studies Research Group took its first form in mid-2019, at a meeting to discuss emerging research interests in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney and quickly expanded to include six members of the department and a colleague at UTS. Our aim was to explore and develop a distinctive affirmative research approach to work on boys, boyhood, and the conjunction of youth and masculinity more broadly. Across a conference panel and symposium in December 2019 this group developed and elaborated our approach as follows. While there was already a significant amount of feminist research on boys, if still relatively little compared to feminist research on women, girls, or men, we felt a pressing need for more research that not only drew on the tools and the knowledge of feminist cultural and gender studies but did so to engage with boys as the subjects of feminism rather than as objects of feminist concern. In particular, we aimed to move beyond seeing boys and boyhood as problems or obstacles to be addressed in the development of a more gender equal future. We aim to be able to critically inquire into the experiences and representations of boys, certainly without homogenising what boy or boys means, but also without reducing them to a problem space.

In 2020 our group successfully applied for ARC funding to explore representations of Australian boys along these lines, and we have at the same time also been working on other related lines of research. We’ve also published a number of sole- and co-authored articles since our formation and expanded our membership to now include twelve researchers at senior, mid-career, early-career and HDR levels, and to begin to reach beyond the university and academia.

We are interested in engaging with boys as the subjects of feminism rather than as objects of feminist concern.

Meet the team

Research Associate

Dr Prudence Black

Her main research areas include aviation and workplace cultures with a current focus on employment opportunities for women with a criminal record and the careers of academic women.

Dr Prudence Black is a Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney and the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide. Her main research areas include aviation and workplace cultures. Her latest book, Smile, Particularly in Bad Weather: The Era of the Australian Airline Hostess (UWA Publishing, 2017) is about the gendered and industrial relations history of flight hostesses and flight attendants. She has also worked on a long term research project with Dress for Success, Sydney and Success Works, programs designed to help disadvantaged women and women affected by the criminal justice system. Her interest in Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies is linked to research in transient mental illnesses and whether that might be a category that applies to the diagnosis of ADHD in boys.
Lecturer

Dr Jessica Kean

She draws on queer, feminist cultural studies to explore unconventional relationships.

Dr Jessica Kean is a lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney who draws on queer, feminist cultural studies to explore unconventional relationships. Her early work in this area focused on negotiated non-monogamy (see, for example, Kean, 2015; Kean 2017; Kean 2018). She also has a strong interest in external engagement and applied research & teaching, working with a team from ACON and Relationships Australia NSW to research and develop domestic violence intervention programs for LGBTIQ people (Gray et al. 2020), and teaching units in partnership with Elizabeth Broderick & Co and KYUP Project on a range of topics related to youth and gender. Her work in the Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies team has two strands: the first explores how DFV prevention and gender education programs speaks to and about boys (see Kean & Steains, 2021), and the second explores the way single mothers and queer families navigate the highly gendered experience of ‘raising boys’ without men.
Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr Grace Sharkey

Her research reaches across the areas of youth, pornography, feminism, and queer theory.

Dr Grace Sharkey is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Completing her PhD in the Department in 2018, her research reaches across the areas of youth, pornography, feminism, and queer theory. In studies of youth, Grace has a particular interest in sexual knowledges and what children are allowed to ‘know’. Beyond this, she has long been interested in the (sometimes reductive) meanings we ascribe to terms like ‘objectification’, the ‘male gaze’ and ‘agency’, informed by the feminist writing of Robyn Wiegman. As part of the Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies project, she considers ideas of bad boys and good boys, most recently focusing on the ‘incel’ as a figure of feminist spectacle. Grace has published writing on feminism and masculinity in journals like Continuum and Boyhood Studies. Her next two projects will be about two very different books. The first is Ianto Ware’s 2021 book 'Mother and I'. This research will reflect on how boys are taken up in feminist futures. The second book is Germaine Greer's 'The Beautiful Boy' (2003) and will consider ideas around sexualisation and feminist controversy.
Ph.D. candidate

Sarah Demekech Graham, MCS

Her interests include Indigenous Studies, African American Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, and Queer theory.

Sarah Demekech Graham is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Sarah is also a professional staff member in the department of Student Services at the University of Technology Sydney. Her interests include Indigenous Studies, African American Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, and Queer theory. Sarah is interested in the colonial echoes which shape Black cultures, sexualities, resistance, and survival, and in particular, the forms in which resistance are undertaken by Black and Indigenous peoples in white dominated settler nation-states. Sarah’s research with the Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies team draws on her background in transnational Black solidarities and examines institutional effects on Black masculinities, relations, love, and boyhood in the settler nation-states of the United States and Australia.
Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies

Dr Catherine Driscoll

Her research ranges across the areas of youth and gender, popular cultural and media studies, cultural theory, modernist cultural studies, and rural cultural studies.

Dr Catherine Driscoll is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research ranges across the areas of youth and gender, popular cultural and media studies, cultural theory, modernist cultural studies, and rural cultural studies. Her books include Girls (2002), Modernist Cultural Studies (2010), Teen Film (2011), The Australian Country Girl (2014), and The Hunger Games: Spectacle, Risk, and the Girl Action Hero (with Heatwole 2018), and her co-edited scholarly collections include Cultural Pedagogies and Human Conduct (with Watkins & Noble 2015), and Youth, Technology, Governance and Experience (with Grealy & Hickey-Moody 2018). In this team, she is interested in the history of ideas about boys and boyhood, in theories about the conjunction of youth and masculinity, and popular cultural images of boys.
Ph.D. candidate

Finola Laughren

Her research is on how feminists approach forms of misogyny that are mediated by mass media technologies and contemporary political dynamics and she has a particular interest in the “manosphere”.

Finola Laughren is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney and a member of the 'Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies' research team. Her research is on how feminists approach forms of misogyny that are mediated by mass media technologies and contemporary political dynamics and has a particular interest in the congregation of online masculinist subcultures known as the “manosphere”. Finola draws from feminist engagements with psychoanalysis to consider the elements of these men’s psychic lives that are not captured by the concept of “misogyny”. The central premise of her research is that feminists must analyse the complex dynamics that lead men to online spaces like the manosphere, for this might lead them elsewhere—potentially even alongside feminists.
Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr Timothy Kazuo Steains

His research uses psychology and psychoanalytic approaches in cultural studies of race to examine the experience of Asian Australian mixed race boyhood.

Dr Timothy Kazuo Steains is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. He is part of the Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies research team connected to the ARC SRI awarded research project 'Australian Boys: Beyond the Boy Problem'. His research uses psychology and psychoanalytic approaches in cultural studies of race to examine the experience of Asian Australian mixed race boyhood. This includes the construction of racialised masculinities and experiences of primary family dynamics. In particular he’s interested in how this mixed race experience can inform our understanding of the identity, familial, and sexual dimensions of interraciality. With Jessica Kean, he has published on the representation of boys in Australian domestic violence primary prevention campaigns. His past research has been in the areas of Asian Australian Studies and Critical Race Studies, including a focus on mixed race and Japanese Australian identities. Other areas of scholarly interest include cultural studies of whisky.
Research Associate

Sophie Gilfeather-Spetere, MCS

Sophie Gillfeather-Spetere has an MCS from the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, where her research focused on the role of feeling, policy, and practices on young parents' experiences with government and non-government organisations in Australia.

Sophie Gillfeather-Spetere has an MCS from the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, where her research focused on the role of feeling, policy, and practices on young parents' experiences with government and non-government organisations in Australia. She is a former public servant who worked across policy and practice with children and young people, particularly in the child protection and out-of-home care systems. She has worked as a research assistant to Professor Catherine Driscoll and Dr Shawna Tang as part of the Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies research project. She currently works at Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS), where she focuses on evidence translation for policymakers and practitioners.
Research Fellow

Dr Liam Grealy

His core research interests include housing and infrastructure policy in regional and remote Australia and southeast Louisiana, youth and media classification, preventive detention, and higher degree research supervision.

Dr Liam Grealy is a Research Fellow in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney and a Senior Research Officer at Menzies School of Health Research. At USyd, his work for the Housing for Health Incubator examines housing and infrastructure policy in regional and remote Australia and southeast Louisiana. His other core research interests include youth and media classification, preventive detention, and higher degree research supervision. In the Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies project, Liam’s research considers the age and temporalities of boyhood.
Senior Lecturer

Dr Timothy Laurie

His core research interests include cultural theory, gender and sexuality studies, studies in popular culture, and philosophy.

Dr Timothy Laurie is a Senior Lecturer and Higher Degree Research Coordinator in the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. His core research interests include cultural theory, gender and sexuality studies, studies in popular culture, and philosophy. Timothy has recently co-authored The Theory of Love: Ideals, Limits, Futures (Palgrave, 2021) with Hannah Stark, co-edited Unsettled Voices: Beyond Free Speech in the Late Liberal Era (Routledge, 2021) with Tanja Dreher and Michael R. Griffiths, and is an Editor for Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. He also serves as the Regional Representative for Australia and New Zealand on the Board for the Association for Cultural Studies.
Senior Lecturer

Dr Shawna Tang

Her research lies in the nexus of sexuality, gender and race, with a focus on postcolonial Singapore, and Asia.

Dr Shawna Tang is Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research lies in the nexus of sexuality, gender and race, with a focus on postcolonial Singapore, and Asia. Specifically, she studies how queer identities, communities and politics need to take seriously questions of race, nationalism, capitalism and geopolitics. She is the author of Postcolonial Lesbian Identities in Singapore. Her theoretical and methodological investments in feminist, Marxist, critical race and queer cultural studies guide her research projects on sexuality studies in Asia; non-normative female sexualities and relations in Singapore; the globalisation of same-sex marriage and LGBT politics in Singapore and Indonesia; older lesbian sexualities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore; gender and cultural politics in Australia as part of Asia; and transmasculine boyhoods. Shawna brings to the Boys Studies project analyses of transgender boyhood from a critical race and queer studies perspective. She is also developing new work on queerness-as-methodology in understanding postcolonial Singapore and the queer Chinese diasporic community in Australia.
Ph.D. candidate

Hannah Hayes

Hannah’s research is on masculinities and sexual consent education, which looks specifically at externally run and/or externally provided 'masculinity programs'.

Hannah Hayes is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney and is part of the Australian Affirmative Feminist Boys Studies research project. She is a qualified Health and Physical Education teacher and has experience working in schools across Australia and the United Kingdom. Hannah’s research is on masculinities and sexual consent education, which looks specifically at externally run and/or externally provided 'masculinity programs'. Her research draws on her background in Education to analyse these programs and their (re)production of masculinities. Hannah explores the challenges that are faced by schools and teachers in providing a consistent and effective Relationships and Sex Education. Central to her work is how these ‘masculinity programs’ are used by schools as a tool to teach Relationships and Sex Education, with a particular focus on sexual consent education.
Senior Lecturer

Dr Kellie Burns

Kellie is a historical sociologist interested in the intersections of gender, sexuality, health and schooling.

Kellie is a historical sociologist interested in the intersections of gender, sexuality, health and schooling. She is currently investigating the socio-historical role of schools as public health spaces across the late nineteen and early twentieth centuries, examining how ideas about childhood disease and health were constructed. She is also engaged in various projects about vaccination literacy and school-based vaccination clinics, historically and contemporaneously.