Difficult Conversations

Róisín Ryan-Flood is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship (CISC) at the University of Essex. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, kinship, digital intimacies and feminist epistemology. She is the author of Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Sexuality and Citizenship (2009), and co-editor of Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process (2010), Transnationalising Reproduction: Third Party Conception in a Globalised World (2018), and Queering Methodology: Lessons and Dilemmas from Lesbian Lives (2022). She is also co-editor of the journal Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society. Isabel Crowhurst is Reader in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her work explores the construction of social norms around sexual practices and intimate lives. Her recent books include The Tenacity of Couple Norm (with Sasha Roseneil, Tone Hellesund, Ana Cristina Santos and Mariya Stoilova), and Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution (with Susan Dewey and Chimaraoke Izugbara). Laurie James-Hawkins is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Deputy Director of the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship (CISC) at the University of Essex. She is a sociologist of health and gender, and her research interests include reproductive health, contraception, abortion, gender and sexuality among emerging adults. She has published widely on these topics. In recent years Dr. James-Hawkins has been studying sexual consent among university student populations.

Introduction

SECTION 1: DIFFICULT KNOWLEDGE

SECTION 1: DIFFICULT KNOWLEDGE

1. The gender wars and difficult conversations about trans: An interview with Meg-John Barker

2. Facing uneasiness in feminist research: the case of female genital cutting

3. Feminism and race in academia: An interview with Sandya Hewamanne

4. But you’re not defending sugar, are you?

SECTION 2: GENDER, POWER AND INTIMACY

5. Difficult research effects/affects: an intersectional-discursive-material-affective look at racialised sexualisation in public advertising

6. Calling out and piling on: deliberation and difficult conversations in feminist digital social space

7. Interviewing with intimacy: negotiating vulnerability and trust in difficult conversations

8. Coexisting with uncomfortable reflexivity: feminist fieldwork abroad during the pandemic

SECTION 3: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND EMBODIMENT

9. Sexing in the cities: sex, desire and sexual health of black township women who love women

10. Researching sex: gender, taboos and revealing the intimate

11. Building a community of trust: participatory applied theatre workshop techniques for difficult conversations on consent

12. Women's experiences of marital rape in Turkey: ethics, voice and difficult conversations

SECTION 4: BOUNDED KNOWLEDGE

13. Lost for words: difficult conversations about ethics, reflexivity and research governance

14. Gender studies, academic purity and political relevance

15. The feminist classroom in a neoliberal university

16. Focus groups and the ‘insider researcher’; difficult conversations and intersectional complexities

17. Queering the academy