Public Performances, Private Lives: Identity at work, rest and play

Start date: 1 October 1996
End date: 30 September 1999
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Value: £49,700
Primary investigator: Professor Ruth Holliday

This project was based on empirical research using video diaries to explore the performance of sexual identities in work, domestic and social spaces. The diaries allowed respondents to show the clothes they wear on different occasions, and to talk about the process of performance. A key focus was the ways in which identity as a concept functions within `academic', `political' and `subcultural' discourses of sexuality, and drew on diarists' discussions of comfort and discomfort in performing their (differently inflected) identities in these spaces, linking this to theories of performativity and reflexivity.

Publications and outputs

The Comfort of Identity - Ruth Holliday, 1999

We've been Framed: Visualising Methodology - Ruth Holliday, 2000

Filming “The Closet”: The Role of Video Diaries in Researching Sexualities - Ruth Holliday, 2004