Public Lecture and Roundtable Discussion on Body Image and Gender in Neoliberal Times

Roundtable discussion with Prof. Gill, Dr Celia Roberts, Dr Debra Ferreday and Dr Imogen Tyler: ‘Young Women and Body Image in Neoliberal Times’

This event is part of the Sexgen Northern Network. Sexgen is a collaborative interdisciplinary network bringing together gender and sexuality based research centres around the North of England. We aim to bring academic research, writing and thinking on gender and sexuality into conversation with the ideas, cultural expressions and knowledges of community groups, cultural sites and activist organisations.

Abstract

Prof. Gill is well-known for her research in gender and media, cultural and creative work, and mediated intimacy. Monographs include: Theorizing Cultural Work: Labour, Continuity and Change in the Creative Industries (2013) London: Routledge; New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (2011); Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections (2009). Routledge and Gender and the Media (2006) Cambridge Polity Press. For the last decade she has made a significant contribution to debates about the “sexualization of culture”. She enters this contested and polarized field bringing an emphasis upon difference – particularly the ways in which differently located groups (by age, class, gender, sexuality, vulnerability) are positioned by and in relation to sexualization – and upon new ways of thinking about the relationship between culture and subjectivity – how what is “out there” gets “in here” to shape our sense of self. Professor Gill recently collaborated on a 4 year Marsden (Royal Society) project, led by Sue Jackson and Tiina Vares, exploring how pre-teen (9-12 year old) girls negotiate living in an increasingly sexualized culture. In 2011-12 Prof. Gill was part of a team (with Jessica Ringrose, Sonia Livingstone and Laura Harvey) commissioned by the NSPCC to research ‘sexting’, as part of a wider interest in young people’s use of mobile internet technologies. Professor Gill is currently working with Meg Barker (Open University) and Laura Harvey (Brunel) on a book provisionally titled Mediated Intimacy: Sex Advice in Media Culture. An interest in the dynamics of discrimination and inequality is also central to Prof. Gill’s research. In the early 1990s she coined the term ‘new sexism’ to capture the ways in which discourses and practices of gender discrimination change and mutate under new conditions, and has developed this analysis with a sustained interest in postfeminism as a cultural sensibility.

There is no need to register for this event, but it is expected to be popular so arrive early.

Location Details

Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies
Bowland North, Seminar Room 10
University of Lancaster

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