gender and sexualities

Dr Rhys Turner-Moore, Dr David Carless (University of the West of Scotland), Dr Lucy Frith (University of Manchester), Professor Georgina Jones, Dr Aleksandra Krotoski (Pillowfort Productions, USA), Professor Allan Pacey (University of Sheffield), Dr Tanya Palmer (University of Sussex), Dr Lauren Smith, Georgina Forshall, Francesca Taylor 

This four-year project is led by Dr Rhys Turner-Moore and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC; £910,358). 

• The first aim of the project is to explore the relationships involved in online sperm donation, what influences people’s online sperm donation journeys, and what the positive and negative impacts are for those involved.
  • The team will explore these by undertaking qualitative longitudinal research and a cyberethnography with people receiving sperm, people donating sperm, their life partners - if they have one - online site users, and site owners. 

• The second aim of the project is to work alongside people who are actively involved in online sperm donation to identify, and bring about, positive changes
  • From the research findings, the team will create a set of comics and drawings to illustrate people’s experiences of online sperm donation.
  • Then, people involved in online sperm donation will be invited to workshops to reflect on these comics and drawings, and explore their ideal futures for online sperm donation. They will work with the research team to develop an agenda for change and key parts of this agenda will then be put into action together - for example, this could include producing a public awareness and information campaign, advocating for changes in the law, or better informing support services.

For more information, please visit the project website and follow the team on Twitter.

Professor Brendan Gough, Professor Michael Kehler (University of Calgary) & Adam Lowe

This project is an international qualitative research study examining an innovative process to empower sportsmen as agents of change for LGBT inclusion, gender equality and better male mental health. Funded by Worldwide Roar/Sport Allies (£100k), this 18-month project will explore athlete stories of masculinity, body image and allyship as they participate in Worldwide Roar events and engage with LGBT+ communities.

Dr Rhys Turner-Moore, Dr Kate Milnes & Prof Brendan Gough 

This project aimed to explore young people’s (13-18) awareness and experiences of sexual bullying across five European countries and to develop a peer-led interactive workshop to help young people to recognise and address sexual bullying, including sexual harassment and coercion, bullying related to a person's sexual identity or expression, and transphobic bullying.

This multi-national project was funded by the European Commission and represented a collaboration with Dr Kate Milnes (co-lead) and Professor Brendan Gough at Leeds Beckett University and five NGOs. The findings from the ASBAE project have been discussed in the House of Commons and were included in the Women and Equalities Committee’s Inquiry into Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools.

For more information, please visit the project website

Dr Paula Singleton (PI), as a part of, and with, the Stigmatised Sexualities and Sexual Harm (SSSH!) research group

The SSSH! research group is working with a local consent activist, Jenny Wilson. The first part of this scheme has been funded by PsyCen. Jenny will be working with the research group on creative dissemination and on how all forms of consent may be relevant to their research. For further details, please see consentculture.co.uk or talk to the project leader, Paula Singleton.

Dr Bridgette Rickett

Bridgette Rickett lead a project to create an interdisciplinary cluster of academics (reside across 2 faculties, 3 schools and across 2 institutes) with expertise in gender, sexuality and young people in order to generate new innovative approaches and solutions in the under-researched area of transgender children’s experiences of health, education and social care provision. 

The project aims and objectives had global reach (through international recognised output) and strong local impact (through partnerships with local bodies such and the ‘Yorkshire Trans Network’ and the national organisation ‘Mermaids’) and engaged in research which aims to enhance healthcare, education and social care provision for gender variant children – published stage 1 findings; 

Rickett, B and Johnson, K and Ingle, H and Reynolds, M (2020) Support for parents/carers of primary school aged gender diverse children in England, UK: a mixed-method analysis of experiences with health services. Health Sociology Review. ISSN 1446-1242 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14461242.2020.1857656

Dr Kate Milnes 

Kate co-led a project exploring how creative methodologies could be employed to facilitate Relationships and Sex Education and communication about sexual bullying and pornography between young people and school staff. The F-COSTE (Facilitating Communication on Sexual Topics in Education) project was a collaborative project spanning 5 Schools of the University: Sport (Prof David Carless and Dr Kitrina Douglas), Social Sciences (Dr Kate Milnes and Dr Rhys Turner-Moore), Education (Dr Jon Tan), Health & Community Studies (Dr Erika Laredo) and Computing, Creative Technologies & Engineering (Andrew Sandham) and was funded by Leeds Beckett University's Research Cluster Award Funding – see output - Carless D; Douglas K; Milnes K; Turner-Moore T (2020) ‘Everyone Knows Me as the Weird Kid’: Being Bisexual, Genderfluid and Fifteen. Qualitative Inquiry, 26 (7), pp. 840-84

Professor Georgina Jones 

This Scientific Impact Paper was developed prior to the emergence of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Its aim is to inform those involved in the care of pregnant women in the UK about the relationship between social determinants of health and the risk of maternal death.

Social determinants are the social conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. These factors can be individual, institutional/structural and legal, and shape a person's health, their exposure to illness and access to care.

The worse social and economic positions people are in, the worse their health outcomes are likely to be.

The evidence suggests a strong relationship between social determinants and poor maternal outcomes, including an increased risk of maternal death.

Despite the provision of free reproductive and maternity services, current models of care are still failing those pregnant women living in adverse social circumstances prior to, during and after pregnancy.

Healthcare professionals have limited power on their own to modify social determinants of health, but this paper concludes with recommendations to improve the maternal outcomes of vulnerable pregnant women residing in the UK and proposes improvements to the collection and reporting of maternal outcome data, with further investment in prevention and intervention measures to better support these women.

View the full report

Prof Brendan Gough

The above report was published in September 2020. It focuses on masculinities, help-seeking and wider social determinants of male mental health and is based on a review of the literature within Europe and beyond. See the WHO webinar [2019] on this issue