Masculinities, roles and transitions symposium report

The event explored critical sociological questions that examine the relationships between masculinities, men’s health and well-being, and key spatial and temporal transitions across the life course.

On Tuesday 10 May 2016, Dr Anna Tarrant (University of Leeds) and Dr Sally Brown (Edinburgh Napier University) hosted the ‘Masculinities, roles and transitions’ event at the University of Leeds, which was funded by the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness.

One of the key aims of this event was to explore critical sociological questions that examine the relationships between masculinities, men’s health and well-being, and key spatial and temporal transitions across the life course. These themes were addressed in presentations by a number of invited speakers.

Presentation slides and resources

Throughout the day, six presenters were also given the opportunity to give brief 5-minute presentations about their research interests to showcase some of the excellent work that is advancing the field. These included:

  • Zoe Darwin (University of Leeds) – Perinatal mental health experiences of fathers (pregnancy to first year after birth),
  • Siyang Cao (York University) – Masculinities among young men in contemporary Chinese society,
  • Marina Yusupova  (University of Manchester) - Shifting Masculine Terrains: Russian Men in Russia and the UK,
  • Georgia Philips (UEA) - ‘Counting fathers in’ - Understanding men’s experiences of the child protection system,
  • Rafaella Ferrero Camoletto (University of Turin) – The intersections of masculinity, sexuality and ageing in the Viagra era,
  • Helen Cramer (University of Bristol) - the Reprovide research programme, trialing the effectiveness of group perpetrator programmes to look at how ideas of masculinities are used to try and effect change in men’s violent and abusive behaviour.

Postgraduates were also given the opportunity to enter a poster competition. Five researchers entered the competition and James Ravenhill (University of Sussex) was declared the winner with his poster presentation entitled ”There are too many gay categories now”: Discursive constructions of gay masculinity’. Well done to Clay Darcy, Adam Lowe, Steven Markham and Deeni Idris who also shared their research on the day.