Dr Patricio Simonetto

Profile

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.

I completed my doctorate in Social Sciences and Humanities at the National University of Quilmes, Argentina. 

Responsibilities

• Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies,
• Deputy Director of Recruitment and Admissions,

Research interests

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. 

My scholarship so far has focused on three research projects. My first project studies the radicalisation of homosexual liberation movements in Latin America and the Latinx diaspora in the US, which led to my first monograph Entre la injuria y la revolución. El Frente de Liberación Homosexual en la Argentina [Between Injury and Revolution. The Frente de Liberación Homosexual in Argentina] (2017).

I have contributed to the transnational study of LGBT+ movements by challenging Global North literature that has emphasised Stonewall as a turning point in queer politics. My research shows the role of South-South connections and local political cultures in the emergence of queer revolutionary political thinking. This research has been recently awarded the Carlos Monsiváis Prize by the Latin American Studies Association (2021). 

My second monograph, El dinero no es todo. Compra y venta de sexo en la Argentina del siglo XX / Money isn't Everything. The Sale and Purchase of Sex in Argentina during the Twentieth Century (published in Spanish in 2020) addresses the commercialisation of sexuality in Argentina.

This project explores how Argentina's public debates about venereal diseases, also known as "white slavery", played a major role in redefining notions of whiteness, masculinity, and class. The book was awarded the Latin America in Translation (LAT) Award and will be published in English by the University of North Carolina Press in 2024. 

My forthcoming monograph, A Body of One's Own. A Trans History of Argentina [Autunm 2023] places the making of the trans* body at the core of modern Argentine history. The monograph explores how the scientific and popular public portrayal of trans bodies was decisive in the making of the shifting notion of sex and its impact on gender policing.

My book shows that ideas about "sex change" redefined broader notions of citizenship and nationhood, as well as the conflict between medical knowledge and law. Argentina banned the so-called "sex change" surgeries. Beyond medical knowledge and legal policing, my book explores the long history of homemade transgender embodiment technologies, from the making of rubber prostheses to the self-injection of industrial silicone. My book decentralises the history of science by showing how, in a context in which the state banned medical-assisted gender affirmation practices, trans people developed scientific knowledge and practices.

I am working on a new research project that studies cultures of slenderness and fatness in Argentina. My scholarship engages the body as a terrain of articulation of gender, sexuality, race, social class, and ableism. 

Qualifications

• Doctor in Social Sciences and Humanities
• B.A. (Licenciado) in Social Communication
• FRHistS
• FHEA

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• UKLAH - the United Kingdom Latin American History Association

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies