Jessica Ringrose
University College London, Institute of Education, Faculty Member
- Gender, Gender Studies, Girlhood Studies, Deleuze, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Feminist Theory, and 89 moreFeminism, Rosi Braidotti, Gender and education, Feminist Research Methods, Constructions of femininity, Femininity, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Postfeminism, Femininity And Hip Hop, Digital Ethnography, Digital Identity, Gender Discourse, Judith Butler, Queer Theory, Children and Media, Poststructural Methodologies, Mobile social networking, Cyberbullying, Affect (Cultural Theory), Poststructuralist Feminist Theory, Sexualities education, Cyber Bullying, School Bullying, Posthumanism, Psychosocial Studies, Critical Race Studies, Sociology of Education, Online Media, Computer-Mediated Communication, Assemblage Theory - Manuel De Landa, Black feminism, Masculinity and Gender Studies, Masculinity, Internet research methods, Virtual Communities, Media theory and Research, Educational Inequalities (class; race; gender etc), Women's Studies, Youth Studies, Youth Culture, Social Networking, Mobile and Location-Based Media, Political communication, Political Identity, Digital Media, New Media, Digital Story Telling, Social Networking Sites and Teenagers, Social Networking Sites (SNS), Sexting, Web 2.0, Iphones, Facebook, Virtual Revolution, Social Networks, Mobile Communications, Race, Class, Sex and Gender, Media and Children, Substantive: Young Masculinities, Femininities and Sexualities, Contemporary and Historical Sexualisation Debates, Digital Sociology, Geographies of embodiment, practice, affect and materiality., Schizoanalysis, Post-feminism, The Internet, Human Computer Interaction, Social Network Analysis (SNA), Public Pedagogy, Feminist new materialism, New Materialism, Netnography (Research Methodology), Selfies, Jasbir Puar, Poststructuralism in Education, Feminist Posthumanism, Object Oriented Ontology, Internet Trolling, Slut Shaming, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Feminist Media Studies, Qualitative methodology, Feminist Sociology, Sociology, Education, Arts-Based Research, and Gender and Sexualityedit
- Jessica Ringrose is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at the University College London Institute of Educ... moreJessica Ringrose is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at the University College London Institute of Education.
I work at the intersections of Sociology of Education, critical psychology, media studies and gender and feminist studies.
I research young people's digitised gender and sexual identities and possibilities of resistance to 'compulsory' heterosexual norms of femininity and masculinity. I also research teens' digital gender and sexual activisms and feminist activisms. Recent studies include projects on feminism in school, digital feminist activism, youth 'sexting', and gender and sexual diversity and equality initiatives at school.
My work has explored and troubled ideas around girls 'sexualization' and 'pornification' and critiqued psychological discourses of (cyber)bullying, gender and aggression in school.
My research monograph book: Postfeminist Education? Girls and the sexual politics of schooling (2013, London, Routledge) explores how education is implicated in contemporary postfeminist panics over girlhood: girls' 'success', 'meanness' and 'sexiness'. The book offers new tools for thinking about and researching girls' subjectivity, agency and 'resistances' to the competitive heterosexual matrix. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415557498/
My co-edited book, Deleuze and Research Methodologies (with Rebecca Coleman, Edinburgh University Press) is the first collection to bring together a range of international, interdisciplinary essays that explore how Deleuzian thinking is shaping empirical social sciences research (Edinburgh University Press).http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748644117
Methodologically and theoretically my research draws on feminist poststructural, psychosocial, posthuman, new materialism and affect theories to understand subjectivity and social transformation. I have developed this line of thinking and research with my longstanding writing partner, Professor Emma Renold. Our recent edited book, Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation (Palsgrave, 2015, edited with Emma Renold and Danielle Egan) explores cutting edge research on children's sexuality especially foregrounding empirical research in this area.
My PostDoc (2004-2006, Cardiff University) Explored and deconstructed gendered discourses of young femininity, aggression and bullying.
My PhD (2004, York University, Toronto) examined anti-racist, feminist pedagogy in undergraduate Women's Studies. The thesis drew upon Black Feminist intersectional and psychosocial persepctives to help unpack the complexities and contradictions of racialized, classed, gendered and sexualized subjectivities. I focused on defensiveness in learning, particularly white defensiveness, and diverse performances of femininity in the classroom.edit
The Mayor of London’s #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign is focused on tackling gender inequality in and around London. Earlier this year, UCL was commissioned to carry out a study, exploring how women experience gender in London’s... more
The Mayor of London’s #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign is focused on tackling gender inequality in and around London. Earlier this year, UCL was commissioned to carry out a study, exploring how women experience gender in London’s out-of-home advertising.
‘The Women We See’ research collected the stories of 16 women (aged 21-65) and 22 teen girls (14-16) from a range of backgrounds to explore how they experience advertising content that they see in London’s public spaces. A quantitative survey also captured the views of 2,012 women and men on gender and diversity in London’s advertising.
While there have been some important positive changes in advertising content, the research found that gender equality and diversity in advertising remains a problem for all media channels across London. The Women We See report focuses specifically on the impact of out-of-home advertising and provides recommendations for advertisers on how to tackle this issue.
The Women We See report recommends that advertisers tackle this issue by considering
the intersecting issues of age, ability, culture, religious, ethnicity, gender and sexuality shaping Londoners’ identities and experiences.
‘The Women We See’ research collected the stories of 16 women (aged 21-65) and 22 teen girls (14-16) from a range of backgrounds to explore how they experience advertising content that they see in London’s public spaces. A quantitative survey also captured the views of 2,012 women and men on gender and diversity in London’s advertising.
While there have been some important positive changes in advertising content, the research found that gender equality and diversity in advertising remains a problem for all media channels across London. The Women We See report focuses specifically on the impact of out-of-home advertising and provides recommendations for advertisers on how to tackle this issue.
The Women We See report recommends that advertisers tackle this issue by considering
the intersecting issues of age, ability, culture, religious, ethnicity, gender and sexuality shaping Londoners’ identities and experiences.
Research Interests: PR and Advertising, Public Transport, Advertising, Advertising And Social Culture, Social Representations, and 31 moreWomen's Rights, Advertising and Media, Advertising and Gender, Qualitative Research Methods, Interviewing, Public Space, Marketing & Advertising, Women and Culture, London, Creative Advertising, Advertisement, Advertising Psychology, Urban Public Open Space, Gender and use of urban public space, Public spaces, Media Representation of Marginalised Groups ( People with Disability, Women and Elderly), Walking Interview, Disability representation in media, Media representation of women, Ways of Seeing, Advertising and public relations, Gender and Public Policy, Advertising and Marketing Communications, Media Education, Social Representation, Disability and Inclusion, Advertising and Branding, Representations of Race and Ethnicity In the Media, Portrayal of Women in Advertising, Outdoor advertising, Fashion Advertisements, GENDER AND ADVERTISING, and Out of Home Advertising, OOH, Sensors, Public Space, People Flow, Implicit Interaction
In this talk I outline my positions related to research on bullying for the World Anti-bullying Forum 2017, Stockholm #WABF2017. I argue 'bullying' and 'cyberbullying' are concepts that are overused and perhaps reaching the end of their... more
In this talk I outline my positions related to research on bullying for the World Anti-bullying Forum 2017, Stockholm #WABF2017. I argue 'bullying' and 'cyberbullying' are concepts that are overused and perhaps reaching the end of their ability to explain or address the complexity of conflict and violence in institutional settings or online in our digitally mediated world. New terminology is needed to enable the reduction of gender, sexual, race-related (and other forms of) violence. Effective strategies to improve the (e)safety and well-being of young people in schools must consider student's backgrounds and protected identities and rights. The terms violence, technologically facilitated violence, harassment, abuse, hate-speech, conflict, sexism, racism, homophobia (and others) all offer useful tools to expand our vocabulary and analysis as we work to tackle aggression and violence in schools.
Research Interests: Sociology, Education, Sociology of Education, Digital Media, Anti Bullying, and 14 moreBullying, School Bullying, Qualitative Research, Cyberbullying, Sexual Harassment, Girls' Studies, School Climate, Sexism, Cyber Bullying, Cyberbullying in Schools, Sexual Discrimination, School Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Adolescents, Cybersexism, and The intersection of bullying and sexual harassment
Executive Summary: This submission outlines research findings on young people’s experiences of sexism, sexual violence and harassment at school drawn from over a decade of research in 14 UK Secondary Schools with approximately 170 young... more
Executive Summary:
This submission outlines research findings on young people’s experiences of sexism, sexual violence and harassment at school drawn from over a decade of research in 14 UK Secondary Schools with approximately 170 young people from 3 clusters of research projects:
1. Girls experiences of gender and sexual inequality at school (2005-2011)
2. Youth sexting (2011-2014)
3. Teen feminism in school and activism against sexual violence (2014-present)
The methodologies for this research are qualitative focus groups, interviews and online observations, which places young people’s voices and communications at the centre of the research. These methods offer often neglected in-depth, first hand experiences of sexism, sexual violence and sexual harassment both online and in and around schools.
This submission outlines research findings on young people’s experiences of sexism, sexual violence and harassment at school drawn from over a decade of research in 14 UK Secondary Schools with approximately 170 young people from 3 clusters of research projects:
1. Girls experiences of gender and sexual inequality at school (2005-2011)
2. Youth sexting (2011-2014)
3. Teen feminism in school and activism against sexual violence (2014-present)
The methodologies for this research are qualitative focus groups, interviews and online observations, which places young people’s voices and communications at the centre of the research. These methods offer often neglected in-depth, first hand experiences of sexism, sexual violence and sexual harassment both online and in and around schools.
Research Interests:
Executive Summary This submission outlines key findings around sexualisation, gender, sexuality and body image drawn from international research and over a decade of international research and from the investigators own projects. The... more
Executive Summary This submission outlines key findings around sexualisation, gender, sexuality and body image drawn from international research and over a decade of international research and from the investigators own projects. The methodologies informing these projects are sociological including qualitative focus groups, interviews and online observations, which places young people's voices and communications at the centre of the research. These methods offer often neglected in-depth, first hand and contextually rich experiences of how young people understand and navigate appearance norms and body image issues both online and in and around schools.
Research Interests:
In this blog we explore four aspects of the new NEU report "Sexism in Schools: 'It's just everywhere'" that we would like to build upon, including more attention to the whys and hows of gender and sexual violence in schools; a... more
In this blog we explore four aspects of the new NEU report "Sexism in Schools: 'It's just everywhere'" that we would like to build upon, including more attention to the whys and hows of gender and sexual violence in schools; a consideration of masculinity and the pressures facing boys; the need for an intersectional approach to gender and sexual inequity, and finally and most importantly offering examples of 'best practice', that is the experiences of students who are already doing model work in transforming gender and sexual inequity! We propose that we need different types of research, engagement and strategies that take a complex view of the negatives and the positives to create fundamental changes around gender and sexuality in schools.
Research Interests:
This edited collection is a careful assemblage of papers that have contributed to the maturing field within education studies that works with the feminist implications of the theories and methodologies of posthumanism and new... more
This edited collection is a careful assemblage of papers that have contributed to the maturing field within education studies that works with the feminist implications of the theories and methodologies of posthumanism and new materialism-what we have also called elsewhere 'PhEmaterialism'. The generative questions for this collection are: what if we locate education in doing and becoming rather than being? And, how does associating education with matter, multiplicity and relationality change how we think about agency, ontology and epistemology? This collection foregrounds cutting-edge educational research that works to trouble the binaries between theory and methodology. It demonstrates new forms of feminist ethics and response-ability in research practices, and offers some coherence to this new area of research. This volume will provide a vital reference text for educational researchers and scholars interested in this burgeoning area of theoretically informed methodology and methodologically informed theory.
Research Interests: Feminist Sociology, Gender Studies, Education, Feminist Theory, Posthumanism, and 13 moreQualitative methodology, Feminist Epistemology, Feminist Philosophy, Gender and Sexuality, Critical Posthumanism, Feminism, Feminist activism, Feminist Research Methods, Feminist studies, New Materialism, Feminist Posthumanism, New Materialisms, and Post-Qualitative Research
This edited collection is a careful assemblage of papers that have contributed to the maturing field within education studies that works with the feminist implications of the theories and methodologies of posthumanism and new materialism... more
This edited collection is a careful assemblage of papers that have contributed to the maturing field within education studies that works with the feminist implications of the theories and methodologies
of posthumanism and new materialism – what we have also called elsewhere ‘PhEmaterialism’. The generative questions for this collection are: what if we locate education in doing and becoming rather than being? And, how does associating education with matter, multiplicity and relationality
change how we think about agency, ontology and epistemology? This collection foregrounds cuttingedge educational research that works to trouble the binaries between theory and methodology. It
demonstrates new forms of feminist ethics and response-ability in research practices, and offers some coherence to this new area of research. This volume will provide a vital reference text for educational researchers and scholars interested in this burgeoning area of theoretically informed
methodology and methodologically informed theory.
The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Taylor & Francis journals.
Jessica Ringrose is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at the UCL Institute of Education, UK. Her work develops innovative feminist approaches to understanding subjectivity, affectivity and assembled power relations. Her books include Post-Feminist Education? (2013); Deleuze and Research Methodologies (2013) and Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation (2015).
Katie Warfield is a faculty member in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada. She is the Director of the Visual Media Workshop, a centre for research and learning into digital visual culture. Her recent writings have appeared in
Social Media + Society, Feminist Media Studies and Feminist Issues, 6th ed. (2016).
Shiva Zarabadi is a PhD candidate at the UCL Institute of Education, UK. Her work explores subjectivity in relation to assemblages of matter and meaning, humans and more-than-humans, and affect, taking a New Materialist and Posthumanist approach. Her PhD research focuses on the becomings of Muslim girls under the structure of Prevent policy in London secondary schools.
of posthumanism and new materialism – what we have also called elsewhere ‘PhEmaterialism’. The generative questions for this collection are: what if we locate education in doing and becoming rather than being? And, how does associating education with matter, multiplicity and relationality
change how we think about agency, ontology and epistemology? This collection foregrounds cuttingedge educational research that works to trouble the binaries between theory and methodology. It
demonstrates new forms of feminist ethics and response-ability in research practices, and offers some coherence to this new area of research. This volume will provide a vital reference text for educational researchers and scholars interested in this burgeoning area of theoretically informed
methodology and methodologically informed theory.
The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Taylor & Francis journals.
Jessica Ringrose is Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education at the UCL Institute of Education, UK. Her work develops innovative feminist approaches to understanding subjectivity, affectivity and assembled power relations. Her books include Post-Feminist Education? (2013); Deleuze and Research Methodologies (2013) and Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation (2015).
Katie Warfield is a faculty member in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada. She is the Director of the Visual Media Workshop, a centre for research and learning into digital visual culture. Her recent writings have appeared in
Social Media + Society, Feminist Media Studies and Feminist Issues, 6th ed. (2016).
Shiva Zarabadi is a PhD candidate at the UCL Institute of Education, UK. Her work explores subjectivity in relation to assemblages of matter and meaning, humans and more-than-humans, and affect, taking a New Materialist and Posthumanist approach. Her PhD research focuses on the becomings of Muslim girls under the structure of Prevent policy in London secondary schools.
Research Interests:
Chapter Abstracts for Book: Book Abstract: In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence... more
Chapter Abstracts for Book:
Book Abstract:
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways digital spaces are often highly creative sites where the public can learn about and intervene in rape culture, little research has explored girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge misogynistic practices. This is therefore the first book-length study to interrogate how girls and women negotiate rape culture through digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps. Through an analysis of high-profile campaigns such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and the everyday activism of Twitter feminists, this book presents findings of over 800 pieces of digital content, and semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and some men around the world, including organizers of various feminist campaigns and those who have contributed to them. As our study shows, digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and a variety of digital platforms are used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes. Furthermore, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers that create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.
Book Abstract:
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways digital spaces are often highly creative sites where the public can learn about and intervene in rape culture, little research has explored girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge misogynistic practices. This is therefore the first book-length study to interrogate how girls and women negotiate rape culture through digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps. Through an analysis of high-profile campaigns such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and the everyday activism of Twitter feminists, this book presents findings of over 800 pieces of digital content, and semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and some men around the world, including organizers of various feminist campaigns and those who have contributed to them. As our study shows, digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and a variety of digital platforms are used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes. Furthermore, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers that create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.
Research Interests:
From sites like Hollaback! and Everyday Sexism, which document instances of street harassment and misogyny, to social media-organized movements and communities like #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported, feminists are using participatory... more
From sites like Hollaback! and Everyday Sexism, which document instances of street harassment and misogyny, to social media-organized movements and communities like #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported, feminists are using participatory digital media as actvist tools to speak, network, and organize against sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. As the first book-length study to examine how girls, women, and some men negotiate rape culture through the use of digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps, the authors explore four primary questions: What experiences of harassment, misogyny, and rape culture are being responded to? How are participants using digital media technologies to document experiences of sexual violence, harassment, and sexism? Why are girls, women and some men choosing to mobilize digital media technologies in this way? And finally, what are the various experiences of using digital technologies to engage in activism? In order to capture these diverse experiences of doing digital feminist activism, the authors augment their analysis of this media (blog posts, tweets, and selfies) with in-depth interviews and close- observations of several online communities that operate globally.
Research Interests:
Practice Theory and Education challenges how we think about ‘practice’, examining what it means across different fields and sites. It is organised into four themes: discursive practices; practice, change and organisations; practising... more
Practice Theory and Education challenges how we think about ‘practice’, examining what it means across different fields and sites. It is organised into four themes: discursive practices; practice, change and organisations; practising subjectivity; and professional practice, public policy and education.
Contributors to the collection engage and extend practice theory by drawing on the legacies of diverse social and cultural theorists, including Bourdieu, de Certeau, Deleuze and Guattari, Dewey, Latour, Marx, and Vygotsky, and by building on the theoretical trajectories of contemporary authors such as Karen Barad, Yrjo Engestrom, Andreas Reckwitz, Theodore Schatzki, Dorothy Smith, and Charles Taylor. The proximity of ideas from different fields and theoretical traditions in the book highlight key matters of concern in contemporary practice thinking, including the historicity of practice; the nature of change in professional practices; the place of discursive material in practice; the efficacy of refiguring conventional understandings of subjectivity and agency; and the capacity for theories of practice to disrupt conventional understandings of asymmetries of power and resources. Their juxtaposition also points to areas of contestation and raises important questions for future research.
Practice Theory and Education will appeal to postgraduate students, academics and researchers in professional practice and education, and scholars working with social theory. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to move beyond the limiting configurations of practice found in contemporary neoliberal, new managerialist and narrow representationalist discourses.
TOC
Chapter 1. Introduction: Diffractive readings in practice theory by Julianne Lynch, Julie Rowlands, Trevor Gale & Andrew Skourdoumbis
SECTION 1 – Discursive practices: Practising words, writing and theory
Chapter 2. Exploring words as people’s practices by Dorothy E Smith
Chapter 3. Accounting for practice in an age of theory: Charles Taylor’s theory of social imaginaries by Steven Hodge and Stephen Parker
Chapter 4. Michel de Certeau: Research writing as an everyday practice by Julianne Lynch and Kristoffer Greaves
Chapter 5. ‘Gestures towards’: Conceptualising literary practices for Crises of Ecologies by David Harris
SECTION 2 – Practice, change and organisations
Chapter 6. Shaping and being shaped: extending the relationship between habitus and practice by Julie Rowlands and Trevor Gale
Chapter 7. Practicing policy networks: Using organisational field theory to examine philanthropic involvement in education policy by Joseph J. Ferrare and Michael W. Apple
Chapter 8. A Cultural-Historical Approach to Practice: working within and across practices by Anne Edwards
Chapter 9. The development of a text counselling practice: An actor-network theory account by Ailsa Haxell
SECTION 3 – Practising subjectivity
Chapter 10. Parsing and Re-Constituting Human Practice as Mind-in-Activity by Peter H. Sawchuk
Chapter 11. Boobs and Barbie: Feminist posthuman perspectives on gender, bodies and practice by Julia Coffey and Jessica Ringrose
Chapter 12. The practice of survival: reflexivity and transformation of contract-employed beginning teachers’ professional practice by Michelle Ludecke
Chapter 13. Classroom activity systems and practices of care by Catherine Smith and Russell Cross
SECTION 4 – Professional practice, public policy and education
Chapter 14. Bad research, bad education: The contested evidence for evidence-based research, policy and practice in education by Michael A Peters and Marek Tesar
Chapter 15. Deliberations on the deliberative professional: Thought-action provocations by Trevor Gale and Tebeje Molla
Chapter 16. The temptations and failings of teacher effectiveness research: Provocations of a ‘practice perspective’ by Andrew Skourdoumbis and Julianne Lynch
Contributors to the collection engage and extend practice theory by drawing on the legacies of diverse social and cultural theorists, including Bourdieu, de Certeau, Deleuze and Guattari, Dewey, Latour, Marx, and Vygotsky, and by building on the theoretical trajectories of contemporary authors such as Karen Barad, Yrjo Engestrom, Andreas Reckwitz, Theodore Schatzki, Dorothy Smith, and Charles Taylor. The proximity of ideas from different fields and theoretical traditions in the book highlight key matters of concern in contemporary practice thinking, including the historicity of practice; the nature of change in professional practices; the place of discursive material in practice; the efficacy of refiguring conventional understandings of subjectivity and agency; and the capacity for theories of practice to disrupt conventional understandings of asymmetries of power and resources. Their juxtaposition also points to areas of contestation and raises important questions for future research.
Practice Theory and Education will appeal to postgraduate students, academics and researchers in professional practice and education, and scholars working with social theory. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to move beyond the limiting configurations of practice found in contemporary neoliberal, new managerialist and narrow representationalist discourses.
TOC
Chapter 1. Introduction: Diffractive readings in practice theory by Julianne Lynch, Julie Rowlands, Trevor Gale & Andrew Skourdoumbis
SECTION 1 – Discursive practices: Practising words, writing and theory
Chapter 2. Exploring words as people’s practices by Dorothy E Smith
Chapter 3. Accounting for practice in an age of theory: Charles Taylor’s theory of social imaginaries by Steven Hodge and Stephen Parker
Chapter 4. Michel de Certeau: Research writing as an everyday practice by Julianne Lynch and Kristoffer Greaves
Chapter 5. ‘Gestures towards’: Conceptualising literary practices for Crises of Ecologies by David Harris
SECTION 2 – Practice, change and organisations
Chapter 6. Shaping and being shaped: extending the relationship between habitus and practice by Julie Rowlands and Trevor Gale
Chapter 7. Practicing policy networks: Using organisational field theory to examine philanthropic involvement in education policy by Joseph J. Ferrare and Michael W. Apple
Chapter 8. A Cultural-Historical Approach to Practice: working within and across practices by Anne Edwards
Chapter 9. The development of a text counselling practice: An actor-network theory account by Ailsa Haxell
SECTION 3 – Practising subjectivity
Chapter 10. Parsing and Re-Constituting Human Practice as Mind-in-Activity by Peter H. Sawchuk
Chapter 11. Boobs and Barbie: Feminist posthuman perspectives on gender, bodies and practice by Julia Coffey and Jessica Ringrose
Chapter 12. The practice of survival: reflexivity and transformation of contract-employed beginning teachers’ professional practice by Michelle Ludecke
Chapter 13. Classroom activity systems and practices of care by Catherine Smith and Russell Cross
SECTION 4 – Professional practice, public policy and education
Chapter 14. Bad research, bad education: The contested evidence for evidence-based research, policy and practice in education by Michael A Peters and Marek Tesar
Chapter 15. Deliberations on the deliberative professional: Thought-action provocations by Trevor Gale and Tebeje Molla
Chapter 16. The temptations and failings of teacher effectiveness research: Provocations of a ‘practice perspective’ by Andrew Skourdoumbis and Julianne Lynch
Research Interests:
About the book Offering critical response to a range of popular debates on children's sexual cultures, this ground-breaking volume challenges preconceived and accepted theories regarding children, sexuality and sexualisation. The... more
About the book
Offering critical response to a range of popular debates on children's sexual cultures, this ground-breaking volume challenges preconceived and accepted theories regarding children, sexuality and sexualisation. The contributions to this collection offer compelling accounts from a range of disciplinary fields and transnational contexts to present original empirical research findings, which offer
new ways to make sense of children's sexual cultures across complex political, social and cultural terrains. Organised into five sections, this book addresses the history of young
sexualities research and theory across disciplinary boundaries; pre-teen sexualities and a rethinking of sexual agency and innocence; how space, place and history shape young queer
sexualities; the representation of young sexualities in the popular cultural imaginary; and the role of new media and digital technology in the formation of children and young
people's sexual cultures.
Offering critical response to a range of popular debates on children's sexual cultures, this ground-breaking volume challenges preconceived and accepted theories regarding children, sexuality and sexualisation. The contributions to this collection offer compelling accounts from a range of disciplinary fields and transnational contexts to present original empirical research findings, which offer
new ways to make sense of children's sexual cultures across complex political, social and cultural terrains. Organised into five sections, this book addresses the history of young
sexualities research and theory across disciplinary boundaries; pre-teen sexualities and a rethinking of sexual agency and innocence; how space, place and history shape young queer
sexualities; the representation of young sexualities in the popular cultural imaginary; and the role of new media and digital technology in the formation of children and young
people's sexual cultures.
Research Interests: Education, Media Studies, Sociology of Education, Sociology of Children and Childhood, Children and Families, and 13 moreSocial and Cultural Anthropology, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Anthropology and Sexuality, History of Sexuality, Feminism, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Girlhood Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Sexuality Studies, Children, Childhood studies, and Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography
Routledge Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education showcases scholarly work over a wide range of educational topics, contexts and locations within gender and sexuality in education. The series welcomes theoretically informed... more
Routledge Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education showcases scholarly work over a wide range of educational topics, contexts and locations within gender and sexuality in education. The series welcomes theoretically informed scholarship including critical, feminist, queer, trans, postcolonial, and intersectional perspectives, and encourages creative and innovative methodological approaches. Proposals dealing with critical policy analysis, as it relates to gender and sexuality studies in education, are also invited. The series is committed to publishing scholarly monographs, both sole and co-authored, and edited collections.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Education, Sociology of Education, Sex and Gender, and 22 moreWomen's Studies, Feminist Theory, Social Research Methods and Methodology, Masculinity Studies, Queer Theory, Qualitative methodology, Educational Research, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Gender Equality, Intersectionality Theory, Education Policy, Feminism, Postcolonial Theory, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Gender and education, Intersectionality and Social Inequality, Critical sociology and politics of education, Intersectionality, Women and Gender Studies, Sex Education, and Educational Policy Studies
""Deleuzian thinking is having a significant impact on research practices in the Social Sciences not least because one its key implications is the demand to break down the false divide between theory and practice. Deleuze and Research... more
""Deleuzian thinking is having a significant impact on research practices in the Social Sciences not least because one its key implications is the demand to break down the false divide between theory and practice. Deleuze and Research Methods brings together international academics from a range of social science and humanities disciplines to reflect on how Deleuze’s philosophy is opening up and shaping the methodologies and practices of empirical research. The book emphasises doing research and, in clear and accessible ways, each contributor demonstrates how engaging with Deleuze’s work is re-shaping their research process; from asking new questions about the relationship between theory and methodology, to exploring the conditions under which they conduct research, to thinking through research effects/affects.
Readers will gain crucial insights into cutting-edge Deleuzian methodologies, making the book essential for students, academics and teachers interested in how Deleuze is informing social science research.""
Readers will gain crucial insights into cutting-edge Deleuzian methodologies, making the book essential for students, academics and teachers interested in how Deleuze is informing social science research.""
Research Interests: Human Geography, Sociology of Education, Posthumanism, Qualitative methodology, Poststructuralism, and 15 moreEducational Research, Global cities, Creative Research Methods, Urban Studies, Gilles Deleuze, Poststructuralist Feminist Theory, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard, Deleuzian Methodology, Research Methodology (social sciences), Urban theory, Inventive methods, Urban Networks, Manuel DeLanda, and Continental Philosophy: Alain Badiou
""Postfeminist Education? challenges a contemporary postfeminist sensibility grounded not only in assumptions that gender and sexual equality has been achieved in many Western contexts, but that feminism has gone ‘too far’ with women and... more
""Postfeminist Education? challenges a contemporary postfeminist sensibility grounded not only in assumptions that gender and sexual equality has been achieved in many Western contexts, but that feminism has gone ‘too far’ with women and girls now overtaking men and boys - positioned as the new victims of gender transformations. The book is the first to outline and critique how educational discourses have directly fed into postfeminist anxieties, exploring three postfeminist panics over girls and girlhood that circulate widely in the international media and popular culture. First it explores how a masculinity crisis over failing boys in school has spawned a backlash discourse about overly successful girls; second it looks at how widespread anxieties over girls becoming excessively mean and/or violent have positioned female aggression as pathological; third it examines how incessant concerns over controlling risky female sexuality underpin recent sexualisation of girls moral panics. The book outlines how these postfeminist panics over girlhood have influenced educational policies and practices in areas such as academic achievement, anti-bullying strategies and sex-education curriculum, making visible the new postfeminist, sexual politics of schooling.
Moving beyond media or policy critique, however, this book offers new theoretical and methodological tools for researching postfeminism, girlhood and education. It engages with current theoretical debates over possibilities for girls’ agency and empowerment in postfeminist, neo-liberal contexts of sexual regulation. It also elaborates new psychosocial and feminist Deleuzian methodological approaches for mapping subjectivity, affectivity and social change. Drawing on two UK empirical research projects exploring teen-aged girls’ own perspectives and responses to postfeminist panics, the book shows how real girls are actually negotiating notions of girls as overly successful, mean, violent, aggressive and sexual. The data offers rich insight into girls’ gendered, raced and classed experiences at school and beyond, exploring teen peer cultures, friendship, offline and online sexual identities, and bullying and cyberbullying. The data illuminates how and when girls take up and identify with postfeminist trends, but also at times attempt to re-work, challenge and critique the contradictory discourses of girlhood and femininity. In this sense the book offers an opportunity for girls to ‘talk back’ to the often simplistic either wildly celebratory or crisis-based sensationalism of postfeminist panics over girlhood.
This book will be essential reading for those interested in feminism, girlhood, media studies, gender and education.""
Moving beyond media or policy critique, however, this book offers new theoretical and methodological tools for researching postfeminism, girlhood and education. It engages with current theoretical debates over possibilities for girls’ agency and empowerment in postfeminist, neo-liberal contexts of sexual regulation. It also elaborates new psychosocial and feminist Deleuzian methodological approaches for mapping subjectivity, affectivity and social change. Drawing on two UK empirical research projects exploring teen-aged girls’ own perspectives and responses to postfeminist panics, the book shows how real girls are actually negotiating notions of girls as overly successful, mean, violent, aggressive and sexual. The data offers rich insight into girls’ gendered, raced and classed experiences at school and beyond, exploring teen peer cultures, friendship, offline and online sexual identities, and bullying and cyberbullying. The data illuminates how and when girls take up and identify with postfeminist trends, but also at times attempt to re-work, challenge and critique the contradictory discourses of girlhood and femininity. In this sense the book offers an opportunity for girls to ‘talk back’ to the often simplistic either wildly celebratory or crisis-based sensationalism of postfeminist panics over girlhood.
This book will be essential reading for those interested in feminism, girlhood, media studies, gender and education.""
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Communication, Education, Media Studies, and 83 moreNew Media, Sociology of Education, Journalism, Women's Studies, Feminist Theory, Psychotherapy, Literature, Social Networking, Popular Culture, Digital Media, Queer Theory, Subjectivities, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Educational Inequalities (class; race; gender etc), Development communication, Sexuality, Sexualities education, Gender and Sexuality, Media Education, Gender, Media Literacy, Social Media, Education Policy, Anti Bullying, Feminism, School Bullying, Moral Panic, Qualitative Research, Body Image, Cyberbullying, Facebook, Media, Poststructuralist Feminist Theory, Online Journalism, Postfeminism, Self-Disclosure, Girlhood Studies, Children and Youth, Constructions of femininity, Friendship, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Secondary Education, P2p(peer-2-Peer) Networks, Adolescence (Psychology), Feminist Pedagogy (Women s Studies), Femininity, Intersectionality and Social Inequality, Cybercultures, Poststructuralist Theory, Film, Social Networking Sites and Teenagers, Counseling, Google, Instant Messaging, Online Communication, Youtube, Identity, Youth, Media Research, Postfeminist Popular Culture, Sex Education, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, School, Digital Marketing, Social Communication, Adolescents, Critical Social Research, Race and Class, Early Childhood Curriculum, Media and identity, Media Impact and Effects and Usages, Social Emotional Learning, Digital Story Telling, Iphones, Self Representation, Paywalls, Virtual Revolution, Alternate Media, Theories of Mobility and Inequality, Inductive Theory Building, Play and Creativity in the Curriculum, and Peer Groups and Their Influence Upon the Learning of Young Children
""Rethinking Gendered Regulations and Resistances in Education highlights key debates on the theme of ‘regulation and resistance’, focusing on some of the most pressing contemporary issues in the field of gender and education today. It... more
""Rethinking Gendered Regulations and Resistances in Education highlights key debates on the theme of ‘regulation and resistance’, focusing on some of the most pressing contemporary issues in the field of gender and education today. It underlines the need for educational research to attend to historical and psychosocial specificity, chart local complexity and global disparity, de-colonise our Euro-western-centered gender analysis, and consistently engage with the economic and policy domains of education as researchers and practitioners, if we are to effectively tackle the diversity and complexity of gender equality issues in education.
Chapters in this collection showcase some of the varied and wide-ranging theoretical approaches at play in current gender and education scholarship, and raise questions about the types of research methods that can open up new ways of documenting processes of social and subjective struggle and transformation in education. It stimulates important thinking about what has been, what is and what can be, as we face the future of gender and educational engagement, struggle and debate.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Gender and Education.""
Chapters in this collection showcase some of the varied and wide-ranging theoretical approaches at play in current gender and education scholarship, and raise questions about the types of research methods that can open up new ways of documenting processes of social and subjective struggle and transformation in education. It stimulates important thinking about what has been, what is and what can be, as we face the future of gender and educational engagement, struggle and debate.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Gender and Education.""
Research Interests: Ethics, Feminist Theory, Marxism, Critical Pedagogy, Feminist Philosophy, and 15 moreSexuality, Gender, Sigmund Freud, Feminism, Michel Foucault, Black feminism, Global Feminism, Gender and education, Social and Political Philosophy, Feminist Pedagogy (Women s Studies), Solidarity Economy, Foucault and education, Theories of Socialism, Antiglobalization Social Movements, and Latin American feminisms
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Introduction Mobile digital technologies cannot be treated like some additional feature in young people’s lives. The mobile phone is often more like a limb, rather than a separate object from the posthuman cyborg body. These technologies... more
Introduction Mobile digital technologies cannot be treated like some additional feature in young people’s lives. The mobile phone is often more like a limb, rather than a separate object from the posthuman cyborg body. These technologies are “actants” that dramatically re-shape the agentic possibilities of relating between (post)humans. They are radically transforming “cultures of connectivity” with temporal and material effects. Consider, for instance, how these 15-year-old girls discuss the..
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This paper presents a psychosocial analysis of interview data of three Canadian, middle-class, Jewish mothers engaged in processes and practices of "school choice". We consider how middle-class, white identity intersects with... more
This paper presents a psychosocial analysis of interview data of three Canadian, middle-class, Jewish mothers engaged in processes and practices of "school choice". We consider how middle-class, white identity intersects with Jewish ethnicity. We also examine how ...
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different, and at times work against each other. Furthermore, the adding of biphobia and transphobia into the term list did not seem to fit into the context of Sauntson’s study for a number of reasons. First, the discussion only... more
different, and at times work against each other. Furthermore, the adding of biphobia and transphobia into the term list did not seem to fit into the context of Sauntson’s study for a number of reasons. First, the discussion only incorporated homophobia in the findings, even though it is suggested that educational institutions operate under a ‘more diverse plurality of genders and sexualities’ (10). Then, the researcher did not discuss the implications of the gender diversity approach for transgender students in the classroom. Although the data collected did not mention participants who might identify as transgender, the researcher could have posited how a classroom that is more affirming and inclusive of gender diversity could promote more positive identity development experience for those who might realise a transgender identity later on in adolescence. Finally, the analysis of data utilising queer theory seemed lacking as it discussed hegemonic masculinity and performativity, but did not integrate implications for bisexual or transgender identities in the classroom. These are some instances where the researcher could have included the listed terminology of biphobia and transphobia into the discussion. Therefore, this initial inclusion of biphobia and transphobia in the definition list in the queer theory analysis chapter not only appeared problematic in the way it was presented, but it also seemed to falsely promise greater inclusion of gender and sexuality identities in the findings of the study. I appreciated Sauntson’s organisation of this text. Dedicating a single chapter to each site of analysis really helped the reader to sort through the complicated nature of mixed methods analysis. Additionally, each chapter wove in a review of literature to demonstrate the research that has come before this study. This really helped the reader situate the significance of findings of this data. One thing that could have improved this approach was maybe to allow for the findings of the data, which would be presented at the end of each chapter, to stand alone and not in comparison to other authors’ findings. Overall, I recommend this text as a body of research which works to dismantle the gender binary and systematically analyses power and oppression in an era when educational research is posited from a post-structural point of view.
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We examine a Twitter attack against our phEmaterialist pedagogy during a UK-wide COVID-19 lockdown. We explore how trolls swarmed together in a collective mocking and ridiculing of images of colorful Play-doh genital models posted as part... more
We examine a Twitter attack against our phEmaterialist pedagogy during a UK-wide COVID-19 lockdown. We explore how trolls swarmed together in a collective mocking and ridiculing of images of colorful Play-doh genital models posted as part of a Master’s module we teach. The session explored “clitoral validity” as a feminist pedagogical concept to disrupt phallocentric sexuality education through the modeling of the vulva and clitoris. We focus on a sub-sample of the attack, tweets that explicitly refer to clitoral validity, vulvas, and penises. We develop an analytical frame of networked affect and affective homophily in combination with psychoanalytical concepts to map affective circuits of misogyny and hate. To conclude, we use this episode to shed light on what is at stake for scholars working in feminism and/or gender and sexuality studies using creative, participatory, and arts-based methods and we both trouble and reclaim a position of bad feminist researchers/pedagogue
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The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain youth perspectives on consensual and non-consensual sexting. We began this study on young people’s (12–19) sexting practices in a large urban center. Before the study was put on pause... more
The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain youth perspectives on consensual and non-consensual sexting. We began this study on young people’s (12–19) sexting practices in a large urban center. Before the study was put on pause due to COVID-19 physical distancing measures, we conducted 12 focus groups with 62 participants (47 girls, 15 boys). A key finding was that many girls had received unsolicited sexts (e.g., “dick pics”) or unwanted requests for sexts. Analysis revealed four interconnected themes: (1) unsolicited sexts; (2) unwanted requests for sexts; (3) complexity associated with saying “no”; and (4) general lack of adult support. Using our findings from before COVID-19, we discuss the potential impact of COVID-19 on teens’ sexting experiences and outline the ways in which social workers and other mental health practitioners can support adolescents and their parents in navigating this new context of sexting during and beyond the global pandemic.
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During the summer of 2022, Andrew Tate became a focus of concern for the media, parents, and educational leaders as his sexist and misogynistic social media content became popular with young people, especially boys. To explore Tate's... more
During the summer of 2022, Andrew Tate became a focus of concern for the media, parents, and educational leaders as his sexist and misogynistic social media content became popular with young people, especially boys. To explore Tate's appeal, we conducted a discourse and content analysis of Tate's videos and a small focus group study with boys aged 13-14 from London (United Kingdom). We found that apart from the obvious ways that Tate promotes men's domination of feminine "others," his content also mainstreams misogynistic "manosphere" ideologies. Moreover, Tate plays on boy's fears about their economic futures and place in the structures of hegemonic masculinity while stylising himself as a maverick, but authentic figure who-against the context of his concocted fears-offers hope through advice about dating and entrepreneurial skills. We highlight how these tropes support Tate's business model in the affective and attention economies of social media. Through focus group analysis, we show how these tropes are potent homosocial currencies for boys, including their conceptions of Tate's content as humorous. In so doing, we contribute new theoretical perspectives on the way emotion and affect can work as homosocial currencies across digital and non-digital spaces to reify hegemonic masculinity and normalize misogyny. We conclude by suggesting that rather than attacking Tate's messages which might play into Tate's maverick identity, we should offer young people critical digital literacy education that helps them understand the business models of Tate, and influencers like him, and how they peddle in forms of gendered disinformation.
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In this chapter, we outline our conceptual framework, addressing key theories that underpin our analysis, including, affect and related concepts, including affective solidarity, networked affect, and affective publics. We also introduce... more
In this chapter, we outline our conceptual framework, addressing key theories that underpin our analysis, including, affect and related concepts, including affective solidarity, networked affect, and affective publics. We also introduce key terms from critical technology studies, including platform vernacular and other concepts relevant to the political economy of social media. After providing further information on the six case studies described in the Introduction, including their reason for selection and methods used, the chapter details our unique methodological approach, which draws insights from a range of interdisciplinary tools, including feminist ethnographic methods, thematic textual analysis, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and online observations.
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Chapter 3 presents results from a qualitative content analysis and thematic textual analysis drawn from four case studies: Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, Who Needs Feminism?, and #BeenRapedNeverReported. The chapter presents one of the... more
Chapter 3 presents results from a qualitative content analysis and thematic textual analysis drawn from four case studies: Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, Who Needs Feminism?, and #BeenRapedNeverReported. The chapter presents one of the first attempts to analyze these popular feminist campaigns by answering the question of what kinds of experiences of harassment, misogyny, and rape culture the public are sharing on feminist digital platforms. We begin here to develop a key argument that digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and is used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes, drawing on a range of different conventions or vernacular practices. Taking a cue from critical technology studies, we attend to emerging vernacular practices that we argue have been shaped by platform architecture, affordances, and conventions, which work to simultaneously encourage and discourage certain narratives from certain groups of people.
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In this chapter, we explore how young people use social media to challenge what they position as rape culture in schools and online. In the first part of the chapter we draw on our research with a feminist group in a London secondary... more
In this chapter, we explore how young people use social media to challenge what they position as rape culture in schools and online. In the first part of the chapter we draw on our research with a feminist group in a London secondary school to explore how young people navigate sexual harassment, victim blaming, slut-shaming, rape jokes, cyberflashing, and other forms masculine sexual entitlement online and in school. Next we outline through discussion of research in two further schools how we have used these research findings to build pedagogical interventions in the form of school guidance and lesson plans on digital defence and feminist activism with the charity School of Sexuality Education.
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Online sexual abuse and violence have become an urgent global problem for women and girls, and in particular for poor women, women of colour and LGBTQ women (Ging and Siapera, 2019). Online sexual harassment and abuse is an especially... more
Online sexual abuse and violence have become an urgent global problem for women and girls, and in particular for poor women, women of colour and LGBTQ women (Ging and Siapera, 2019). Online sexual harassment and abuse is an especially urgent issue for young people, for whom digital spaces are key sites of communication, identity formation, self-expression and sexual interaction. The toxic dynamics that frequently underpin these complex entanglements thus pose a significant threat to ethical digital intimacy. This situation became substantially more extreme during COVID-19, with rates of online abuse and harassment rising as young people have been forced to spend more and more time online. During this period, usage of particular platforms (e.g. TikTok) dramatically increased. A substantial rise in screen time also impacted young people’s experiences and digital intimacies in important ways. This paper reports on the findings of a cross-national study conducted in England and Ireland,...
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As we write this introduction in early 2022, this themed issue provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the intersection of education and sexual violence. Although educational institutions – from primary schools to universities –... more
As we write this introduction in early 2022, this themed issue provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the intersection of education and sexual violence. Although educational institutions – from primary schools to universities – have long been identified as structurally violent (Stein 1994) there has recently been (more) intense and renewed focus on this issue. More than four years after the #MeToo movement first emerged, and centuries after women raised sexual violence as a political issue (Serisier 2018), it has once again captured public attention and has been identified not only as an issue that education might help alleviate, but as a crisis which educational institutions must combat from within. The endemic problem of sexual violence in educational contexts has been foregrounded in documentaries such as The Hunting Ground (Dick and Ziering (Dir) 2015), which traces the prevalence of rape culture in US colleges and universities, and in national reports of systemic sexual violence and abuse against Indigenous children institutionalized within Canada’s residential school system (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015). Although sexual violence is a longstanding issue, in the UK and Australia, sexual violence in schools (re)emerged as a pressing public concern in early 2021. In Australia, it was linked with a viral social media poll conducted by Chanel Contos asking her friends if they experienced sexual violence while attending private schools (Chrysanthos 2021). Around the same time in the UK, Soma Sara started an Instagram site Everyone’s Invited as a safe space for survivors to share experiences of violence while at school and university (Hall 2021). To date, Everyone’s Invited has received over 54,000 anonymous testimonies, triggering a government report on the issue (Ofsted 2021). In the UK and Australia, as in many other nations around the world, students, campaigners, and activists have called for better and more comprehensive relationship and sex education (Campbell 2021; Engleman 2020; Hill 2021; Makleff 2021) as a key way of tackling this pervasive issue. The need for better sex education has also been highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic which saw violence against women and girls rise. Identified as a ‘shadow pandemic’, reports from front line workers across the world noted how all types of violence against women and girls were on the rise (UK Women 2020). Not only are many frontline services overwhelmed by increased calls for help, but worryingly, in some contexts, resources used to support survivors have been diverted to provide immediate Covid-19 relief (UN Women 2020). In our own research into online harms and risks just prior to
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Chapter 7 explores how teen girls are using social media to engage with institutionalized and systematic forms of sexism, sexual objectification, and harassment constitutive of not only what can be termed rape culture but also lad culture... more
Chapter 7 explores how teen girls are using social media to engage with institutionalized and systematic forms of sexism, sexual objectification, and harassment constitutive of not only what can be termed rape culture but also lad culture in secondary schools in the UK, US, and Canada. The chapter draws on interview data with 27 teenage girls including individual Skype interviews with 11 teen girls in Canada, US, UK, and Ireland and in-person focus groups with 16 girls from a London secondary school feminist club. We show how platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and group chats provide different affordances and vernaculars for girls to challenge rape culture collectively and individually. We focus on the minutia of moments such as when girls challenge a rape joke on Facebook, collectively operate a feminist Twitter account, or negotiate instances of trolling, offering unique insight into the nuances of using social media as teen feminist activists attending school.
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Intervening in School Uniform Debates: Making Equity Matter in England Sara Bragg & Jessica Ringrose Chapter First Online: 19 July 2023 4 Accesses Part of the The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education book series (CSFE)... more
Intervening in School Uniform Debates: Making Equity Matter in England Sara Bragg & Jessica Ringrose Chapter First Online: 19 July 2023 4 Accesses Part of the The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education book series (CSFE) Abstract In England, the draconian policing of uniform appears to be increasingly endorsed as part of the ‘common sense’ of school leaders, education advisers and policy-makers, and it frequently makes headlines in local and national news media. Less attention is however given to the equity dimensions of uniform policies and practices in relation to diverse students, and how intersecting power relations around class, Britishness, culture, race, context, heterosexuality, cisgender rules and more come into play through the typically ‘sex’-segregated uniform. In this chapter we analyse uniform practices intersectionally and by drawing on a new materialism lens for thinking equity. We explore uniform not as imposed on inevitably already-othered bodies, but as enacting processes of differentialisation and normativisation through a range of spatial and corporeal practices. We discuss a university staff-student ‘community-engaged learning’ project to render uniform more inclusive, which showed how uniforms matter in highly diverse and complex ways. We document how we produced alternative guidance for schools and young people on uniform policies, with equity and diversity in play, and we explore what we know of how the policy has gone out into the world and how it could have, and has, been used by parents, staff and students.
Research Interests: Dress Studies, Posthumanism, Sexual Violence, Gender and Sexuality, Social Justice, and 15 moreEducation Policy, Feminism, Regulation, Educational Equity and Justice, Intersectionality and Social Inequality, Intersectionality, New Materialism, School Improvement, Educational Policy Studies, School Uniforms, School Dress Codes, Coproduction, Sexualisation of Childhood, Dress codes, and Sexual and Gender Based Violence
Intervening in School Uniform Debates: Making Equity Matter in England Sara Bragg & Jessica Ringrose Chapter First Online: 19 July 2023 4 Accesses Part of the The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education book series (CSFE)... more
Intervening in School Uniform Debates: Making Equity Matter in England
Sara Bragg & Jessica Ringrose
Chapter
First Online: 19 July 2023
4 Accesses
Part of the The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education book series (CSFE)
Abstract
In England, the draconian policing of uniform appears to be increasingly endorsed as part of the ‘common sense’ of school leaders, education advisers and policy-makers, and it frequently makes headlines in local and national news media. Less attention is however given to the equity dimensions of uniform policies and practices in relation to diverse students, and how intersecting power relations around class, Britishness, culture, race, context, heterosexuality, cisgender rules and more come into play through the typically ‘sex’-segregated uniform. In this chapter we analyse uniform practices intersectionally and by drawing on a new materialism lens for thinking equity. We explore uniform not as imposed on inevitably already-othered bodies, but as enacting processes of differentialisation and normativisation through a range of spatial and corporeal practices. We discuss a university staff-student ‘community-engaged learning’ project to render uniform more inclusive, which showed how uniforms matter in highly diverse and complex ways. We document how we produced alternative guidance for schools and young people on uniform policies, with equity and diversity in play, and we explore what we know of how the policy has gone out into the world and how it could have, and has, been used by parents, staff and students.
Sara Bragg & Jessica Ringrose
Chapter
First Online: 19 July 2023
4 Accesses
Part of the The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education book series (CSFE)
Abstract
In England, the draconian policing of uniform appears to be increasingly endorsed as part of the ‘common sense’ of school leaders, education advisers and policy-makers, and it frequently makes headlines in local and national news media. Less attention is however given to the equity dimensions of uniform policies and practices in relation to diverse students, and how intersecting power relations around class, Britishness, culture, race, context, heterosexuality, cisgender rules and more come into play through the typically ‘sex’-segregated uniform. In this chapter we analyse uniform practices intersectionally and by drawing on a new materialism lens for thinking equity. We explore uniform not as imposed on inevitably already-othered bodies, but as enacting processes of differentialisation and normativisation through a range of spatial and corporeal practices. We discuss a university staff-student ‘community-engaged learning’ project to render uniform more inclusive, which showed how uniforms matter in highly diverse and complex ways. We document how we produced alternative guidance for schools and young people on uniform policies, with equity and diversity in play, and we explore what we know of how the policy has gone out into the world and how it could have, and has, been used by parents, staff and students.
Research Interests: Dress Studies, Posthumanism, Sexual Violence, Gender and Sexuality, Social Justice, and 12 moreEducation Policy, Feminism, Regulation, Educational Equity and Justice, Intersectionality and Social Inequality, Intersectionality, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, New Materialism, School Improvement, School Dress Codes, Sexualisation of Childhood, and Dress codes
This chapter focuses on women’s use of the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported. Using the hashtag, hundreds of girls and women shared the reasons they didn’t report incidents of sexual assault by partners, family members, friends, and... more
This chapter focuses on women’s use of the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported. Using the hashtag, hundreds of girls and women shared the reasons they didn’t report incidents of sexual assault by partners, family members, friends, and acquaintances. We explore how this feminist hashtag developed in response to the public allegations of sexual violence made about then-popular Canadian CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, and ultimately moved across the media landscape, producing a robust public discussion about sexual violence and rape culture. Drawing on thematic analysis of #BeenRapedNeverReported tweets and interviews with eight women who contributed to the hashtag, we analyze the “affective solidarity” produced along this hashtag and the ways it created new lived possibilities for feminist identification, experience, organizing, and resistance. We contextualize this analysis within a larger Canadian media culture to position the hashtag as both a discursive and affective interventio...
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This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and... more
This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and practices can help us grapple with growing educational complexities, enabling strategies toresist and create alternatives to the patterns of injustice occurring across the world, from burgeoning ethno-nationalist and neo-fascist political movements, to rising global poverty levels, to massive population displacements, to environmental degradation, to toxic internet movements grounded in misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia (Strom & Martin, 2017a). To understand, enquire into, and generate action worthy of the complexity of our times requires a fundamental shift in our thinking and research practice. This shift disrupts the foundational logic on which dominant thinking in education (and indeed, all Western society) is based—humanism and ...
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Chapter 4 draws on semi-structured interviews with 18 organizers of Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and Who Needs Feminism? The chapter interrogates key experiences and the affective dimensions of starting, running, and managing a feminist... more
Chapter 4 draws on semi-structured interviews with 18 organizers of Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and Who Needs Feminism? The chapter interrogates key experiences and the affective dimensions of starting, running, and managing a feminist campaign. The chapter outlines four key arguments: First, we posit that organizing feminist campaigns involves highly affective, invisible, precarious, and time-consuming labor. Second, we demonstrate how involvement in these campaigns can inspire “feminist awakenings” among organizers. Third, we suggest that while mediated abuse is a common experience, it is not universal; rather it operates on a continuum, and evokes varying responses from its victims, including being motivated to continue their activism. Finally, we map how feminist activism is often exhausting and draining, and individual and collective care strategies are needed to prevent activist burnout.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Routledge
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This document offers comprehensive guidance for schools on how to deal with the issue of online sexual harassment, which refers to a range of behaviours where digital technologies are used to facilitate both virtual and face-to-face... more
This document offers comprehensive guidance for schools on how to deal with the issue of online sexual harassment, which refers to a range of behaviours where digital technologies are used to facilitate both virtual and face-to-face sexually based harms. <br>This document lays out the complete context of online sexual harassment, including who is likely to be a target, how the abuse might be manifested, and the impact of this type of harassment.<br>The document provides an overview of laws relating to online sexual harassment, and demonstrates why a whole-school joined up approach is necessary, along with a change to consent-oriented education to replace the abstinence-based approaches which don't work. <br><br>It concludes with key recommendations, including the need for dedicated RSE and PSHE lessons to address this issue, zero-tolerance stances on (online) sexual harassment. <br>The document provides specific recommendations for staff who encount...
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PhEmaterialism is a term that refers to emerging research methodologies in education exploring intersections of feminist community building, theorizing, learning, and activism in education (Ringrose et al. 2018). The mash-up... more
PhEmaterialism is a term that refers to emerging research methodologies in education exploring intersections of feminist community building, theorizing, learning, and activism in education (Ringrose et al. 2018). The mash-up “PhEmaterialism” broken down combines theo- retical approaches drawing on posthumanism (ph) and new materialisms (materialism) with a spe- cific focus on activating the feminist (phem) implications of how these theories are generating new forms of educational research and equity, bespoken by the capitalized “E.” The “feminal” (rather than seminal) foremothers of this approach are the feminist philosophers Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, and Jane Bennett and physicist- philosopher Karen Barad whose pivotal concep- tual contributions we explore in this entry. PhEmaterialist research works primarily to:
• Address ethical urgencies and questions of equity in the age of the Anthropocene.
• Decenter the human from a privileged and extractivist position in the world.
• Attend the agencies of all matter and materialities.
• Attune to more-than-human affects, sensa- tions, and nonlinguistic modes of communica- tion, transmission, and pedagogy.
• Explore complex relationalities between humans and non/other-than-humans.
• Experiment with entanglements of feminist art, activism, community building, pedagogy, research, and theorizing.
• Enliven the possibilities of what academic research can do as it intra-acts with a range of stakeholders (policy makers, pressure groups, politicians, NGOs, etc.) inside and outside of the formal academy.
• Address ethical urgencies and questions of equity in the age of the Anthropocene.
• Decenter the human from a privileged and extractivist position in the world.
• Attend the agencies of all matter and materialities.
• Attune to more-than-human affects, sensa- tions, and nonlinguistic modes of communica- tion, transmission, and pedagogy.
• Explore complex relationalities between humans and non/other-than-humans.
• Experiment with entanglements of feminist art, activism, community building, pedagogy, research, and theorizing.
• Enliven the possibilities of what academic research can do as it intra-acts with a range of stakeholders (policy makers, pressure groups, politicians, NGOs, etc.) inside and outside of the formal academy.
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This chapter aims to contribute to the small but growing research literature that explores young teen girls grappling with negotiating the identity of “feminist” and engaging in feminist practices within the institutional context of... more
This chapter aims to contribute to the small but growing research literature that explores young teen girls grappling with negotiating the identity of “feminist” and engaging in feminist practices within the institutional context of school. Drawing on qualitative research in a U.K. Welsh Secondary school with teens aged fourteen to sixteen, we try to engage with the complexities of what it means to be positioned and position oneself as feminist. We are particularly interested in foregrounding the affective dimension making feminist political subjectivities in the context of girls’ everyday lives, especially their school-based teen peer cultures.Specifically, we explore how occupying the position of teen feminist operates in relation to the contradictory terrain of femininity and sexuality in teen girlhood (Aapola et al. 2005). As noted, mainstream postfeminist media representations tend to produce a projective figure of the abject feminist as a man-hating, anti-sex, prudish, butch, ugly, de-feminised, and almost always adult or older woman (McRobbie 2008). Attempting to occupy the position of young feminist brings contradictions to the fore for girls, since postfeminist versions of sexy femininity are constructed in opposition to feminism (Ringrose 2012). To explore these contradictions, we draw upon Sara Ahmed’s (2010) figure of the feminist killjoy. We deploy her notion of “sticky” affects to explore how good and bad affects puncture and “grip” (Coleman, 2009) the bodies of those who occupy the position of teen feminist and participate in feminist practices. We also consider how affects flow through and among local peer cultures imbued with normalized (hetero)sexism and sexual violence, considering the discursive material constraints around the young sexual girl body (Renold and Ringrose 2011).
Research Interests: Sociology, Gender Studies, Education, Sociology of Education, Heterosexuality, and 15 moreSexuality, Sexualities education, Gender and Sexuality, The Body, Feminism, School Bullying, Postfeminism, Girlhood Studies, Constructions of femininity, Feminist activism, Sexual Identity, Human Sexuality, Sex Education, Sexuality in Adolescence and Young Adulthood, and School Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Adolescents
This chapter explores how the new digital affordances of social media are transforming the gendered and sexual relationalities of networked teens. danah boyd’s (2008; 2013) work has consistently illustrated how much young people ‘heart’... more
This chapter explores how the new digital affordances of social media are transforming the gendered and sexual relationalities of networked teens. danah boyd’s (2008; 2013) work has consistently illustrated how much young people ‘heart’ social networking and find digital connections including flirtation and sexual communication ‘dramatic’, exciting and fun.However, as Van Doorn notes, social networking research on young people has “largely neglected the gendered and sexual dimensions of SNS participation.” This is particularly evident in the neglect of the intersections between three research areas: 1) networked, digital cultures, 2) age, and young teen cultures, and 3) gender and sexual cultures; although exceptions of research exploring young people’s gender and sexual cultures through social media networking include De Ridder and Van Bauwel’s (2013) research on gendered and sexual interactions in teenagers’ (14-18) comments on Facebook, and Ringrose and Erickson Barajas (2011) and Ringrose and Harvey’s (2014) research on teens’ (13-16) performances of sexualised femininity and masculinity across social networking platforms like Bebo, Facebook and BBM. In this paper we draw on a research project that mapped experiences of digital sexual communication amongst 35 young people aged 13-15 in two school communities in inner city, multicultural, London schools in 2011. Our methodology included conducting initial focus groups where we asked young people to &#39;walk us through&#39; their online and mobile phone practices. Young people were then invited to ‘friend’ our Facebook research account. We conducted weekly observations of account activity on selected Facebook profiles for three months. Finally we returned for in-depth individual interviews with 22 case studies. In this paper we explore four case studies in detail, examining how social networking practices enable new flows of connectivity and new mediated temporalities. We demonstrate that these flows are constituted through gendered and sexual discourses of performing idealised forms of masculinity and femininity. We explore the power relations in play where digital practices mediate binary and hierarchical forms of gendered and sexual differences.
Research Interests: Psychology, Computer Science, New Media, Feminist Theory, Cyberpsychology, and 15 moreDigital Media, Posthumanism, Gender and Sexuality, Digital Culture, Feminism, Computer Mediated Communication, Qualitative Research, Cyberbullying, Facebook, Online social networks, Girlhood Studies, Feminist Research Methods, Cybercultures, School Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Adolescents, and Selfies
This chapter summarizes our key findings and case studies and outlines directions for future scholarly inquiry. The Conclusion reiterates the importance of not only asking questions about what digital feminism does, or how it is... more
This chapter summarizes our key findings and case studies and outlines directions for future scholarly inquiry. The Conclusion reiterates the importance of not only asking questions about what digital feminism does, or how it is manifested, but how it is felt and experienced amongst participants. In particular, we draw out the implications of our findings to explore affective and material changes in the lives of our participants. We discuss how our research has revealed a range of new connectivities among girls and women and show the main aspects of what digital feminism can do including educating and transforming lives, and ask what it can achieve, especially considering its demanding nature. We consider these potentialities in light of recent surges of victims speaking out against sexual violence in #MeToo and #TimesUp.
Research Interests:
With the current proliferation of images and narratives of girls and girlhood in popular culture, many ‘truths’ about girls circulate with certainty. Amongst the aims of this Special Issue is to examine critically these ‘confi dent... more
With the current proliferation of images and narratives of girls and girlhood in popular culture, many ‘truths’ about girls circulate with certainty. Amongst the aims of this Special Issue is to examine critically these ‘confi dent characterizations’ (Trinh 1989), to trace the social conditions which produce these ‘truths’ along with the public fascination with girls and to analyze critically the eff ects of these ‘truths’ in the lives of young girls. Th e concepts of resistance and agency have been critical to the fi eld of youth studies, sociology of education and school ethnographies (Hall and Jeff erson 1976; McRobbie 1978; Willis 1978) for conceptualizing the relationships between young people and their social worlds. Ground breaking scholarship by McRobbie (2000) challenges the gendered assumptions of political agency articulated in previous theories of subcultures developed in the 1970s and 80s. While feminist poststructuralist work in the 1990s has re-conceptualized agency i...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Advertising, Advertising And Social Culture, Advertising and Media, Advertising and Gender, and 15 moreInterviewing, London, Creative Advertising, Advertisement, Advertising Psychology, Gender and use of urban public space, Disability representation in media, Media representation of women, Marketing Advertising, Advertising and public relations, Gender and Public Policy, Advertising and Marketing Communications, Advertising and Branding, Fashion Advertisements, and GENDER AND ADVERTISING
This chapter shows how feminists are using not only Twitter but a diverse interconnected range of social media platforms to engage in their digital activism. Drawing on a survey of 46 self-defined Twitter feminists, and a subsample of... more
This chapter shows how feminists are using not only Twitter but a diverse interconnected range of social media platforms to engage in their digital activism. Drawing on a survey of 46 self-defined Twitter feminists, and a subsample of email, Skype, and in-person interviews with 21 of these respondents we explore how participants challenge rape culture and engage in feminist activism creating social media counter-publics. Twitter affords feminists connectivity, speed, immediacy, and global reach to share and debate: important pedagogical processes for raising awareness and visibility around issues such as rape culture. Despite the widely understood benefits of social media, participants recounted challenges of participating in digital activism on Twitter, including instances of hostile anti-feminism and episodes of sexually aggressive trolling. We outline participants’ emergent strategies for coping with technologically mediated misogyny and illuminate the significant role Twitter is...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Report on findings from a 21-month project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Kaitlyn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, Jessalynn Keller Project aims: Map out how and when rape culture, harassment, misogyny and sexual... more
Report on findings from a 21-month project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Kaitlyn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, Jessalynn Keller
Project aims:
Map out how and when rape culture, harassment, misogyny and sexual violence are occurring in on and offline spaces, and to explore and analyse feminist responses
To understand the experiences of girls and women who participate in this activism
To understand different levels or types or identifications with feminism and activism – from professional activists to amateur – those that say they can’t see what they do is ‘enough’ to qualify as activism
To document these feminist activist practices and experiences through the creation of a “living archive” of contemporary digital feminist activism
Project aims:
Map out how and when rape culture, harassment, misogyny and sexual violence are occurring in on and offline spaces, and to explore and analyse feminist responses
To understand the experiences of girls and women who participate in this activism
To understand different levels or types or identifications with feminism and activism – from professional activists to amateur – those that say they can’t see what they do is ‘enough’ to qualify as activism
To document these feminist activist practices and experiences through the creation of a “living archive” of contemporary digital feminist activism
Research Interests:
This talk reports on a research project “Feminism in Schools: Mapping Impact in Practice” where university academics and teachers set up feminist after school and lunch groups in secondary schools across England and Wales. Seven highly... more
This talk reports on a research project “Feminism in Schools: Mapping Impact in Practice” where university academics and teachers set up feminist after school and lunch groups in secondary schools across England and Wales. Seven highly diverse schools participated, including mixed, single sex and fee paying institutions with participants from a wide range of religious, ethnic and socio economic backgrounds. The research involved semi-structured focus group interviews and audio and visually recorded workshops with 80 young people, as well as individual interviews with teachers. Creative methodologies formed part of the research design, including the documentation of a range of material intra-activisms, such as writing poems and blog entries, making posters, designing and delivering assemblies, and individual and group based social media engagements on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The focus of this discussion will consider the potential impact of the project. Impact is a UK Research Excellence Framework concept designed to ‘measure’ the ability of research to impact communities and benefactors outside the academy. This talk will critically consider the measurement criteria of REF impact through a feminist Deleuzo-Guattarian lens to think about the feminism in schools project, asking: 1. What is the conceptual and applied nature of this research?; 2 How does the research methodology conceive of educational policy and practice?; 3 How do the outcomes exemplify praxis or research to practice? These questions are explored through discussion of feminist research assemblages as processes of enacting ethico-political intra-activisms, which aim to impact communities through multiple, complex levels of engagement.
Research Interests:
Bullying research and policy has been largely “gender blind” (Ringrose & Renold, 2010) – failing to note the socio-cultural context of bullying and ways in which exclusion and violence are often rooted in reinforcing “rules” for... more
Bullying research and policy has been largely “gender blind” (Ringrose & Renold, 2010) – failing to note the socio-cultural context of bullying and ways in which exclusion and violence are often rooted in reinforcing “rules” for heteronormative gender (Payne & Smith, 2013). Bullying research attending to gender comes largely from psychology and reinforces gendered stereotypes rather than exploring the policing of gender as a primary function of bullying behavior. Using data from a range of research studies, papers in this symposium explore ways heteronormative expectations for gender compliance are deeply rooted in school culture, reinforced by students and teachers. We explore the discursive limitations around “who” students are allowed to be, as well as possibilities for rupturing the dominant gender order.
Research Interests:
The international media has tended to dramatize extreme incidences of teen sexting ‘gone wrong’. Take for instance the Canadian case of Amanda Todd where an image of her bare breasts circulated online without her consent. This particular... more
The international media has tended to dramatize extreme incidences of teen sexting ‘gone wrong’. Take for instance the Canadian case of Amanda Todd where an image of her bare breasts circulated online without her consent. This particular story is a ménage of girlhood crisis - where the circulation of the ‘topless photo’ is said to have directly led to cyber and physical bullying at several schools, severe depression, and panic disorder, self-mutilation, drug and alcohol abuse, two attempted suicides and finally death. International anti-sexting campaigns have echoed this media risk discourse, positioning ‘sexting’ as a problem of under-aged girls’ lacking vigilance in their uses of social media, and boys as predatory and over-sexed. International research has positioned sexting anxieties as an adult moral panic and suggested the critical issues for young people are trust, respect and consent over the sharing of images via mobile technology (Powell, 2010; Karianan, 2012; Albury, 2013). In this paper we consider how new binary divisions can be drawn in these discussions between tech-savvy, sexually liberal teens and morally panicked adults. We complicate this picture by situating ‘sexting’ within a wider sexist ‘postfeminist’ media culture considering how body parts like teen breasts can take on such significance that they are capable of mobilizing the type of sexualised shame, trauma and panic seen in the case of Amanda Todd. Drawing on two qualitative research studies on youth ‘sexting’ which included: focus groups, individual interviews, classroom observations and virtual ethnography with 52 teens (aged 13-15) from three urban London schools, we examine how young teens negotiate ideas about sexual morality in relation to ‘sexting’ images of masculine and feminine body parts. For instance, we explore how images commodify and ‘mark’ bodies, and can be used to garner ‘value’, and to attach shame, through semi-public exchange. This works in complex ways that trouble boundaries around consent and which need unpacking in relation to issues of compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity within the networked peer group. Finally we consider the state of public pedagogy and school based interventions around sexting, arguing it is critical for schools to be engaging in discussions about how gendered power and sexual morality works in young people’s everyday digital sexual communication and image exchange.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology of Education, Domestic Violence, Psychotherapy, Social Networking, Subjectivities, and 27 moreEating Disorders, Gender, Feminism, Qualitative Research, Body Image, Self-Disclosure, Children and Youth, Gender and education, Counseling, Instant Messaging, Online Communication, Identity, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Dieting, Sexting, Adolescents, Critical Social Research, Race and Class, Women and Food/eating, Friendship Quality, Substantive 1: Young Masculinities, Femininities and Sexualities (Subjectivity, Relationship Cultures), Sexualisation Debates, Real'/virtual Socialities, Theories of Mobility and Inequality, and Inductive Theory Building
Critical discourse on postfeminism has grown exponentially over the last decade in the disciplines of cultural and media studies, yet a significant gap in the field of educational research remains. In Postfeminist Education?: Girls and... more
Critical discourse on postfeminism has grown exponentially over the last decade in the disciplines of cultural and media studies, yet a significant gap in the field of educational
research remains. In Postfeminist Education?: Girls and the Sexual Politics of Schooling, Jessica Ringrose explores how postfeminism informs, and is informed by, educational
discourse and policy. The author examines the oppositional representation of girls located within two binary categories: those deemed ‘empowered’ by consumer culture or by
educational success, and those deemed ‘at risk’ within an increasingly sexualized society. The chapters in the book are divided between theoretical analysis that charts both the
historical and contemporary construction of public and educational responses to the ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ of girls and boys, and later chapters which draw on the author’s
empirical fieldwork to examine the consequences of ‘postfeminist panics’ surrounding the sexualization of Western cultures.
research remains. In Postfeminist Education?: Girls and the Sexual Politics of Schooling, Jessica Ringrose explores how postfeminism informs, and is informed by, educational
discourse and policy. The author examines the oppositional representation of girls located within two binary categories: those deemed ‘empowered’ by consumer culture or by
educational success, and those deemed ‘at risk’ within an increasingly sexualized society. The chapters in the book are divided between theoretical analysis that charts both the
historical and contemporary construction of public and educational responses to the ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ of girls and boys, and later chapters which draw on the author’s
empirical fieldwork to examine the consequences of ‘postfeminist panics’ surrounding the sexualization of Western cultures.
Research Interests: Education, Media Studies, Feminist Theory, Qualitative methodology, Sexuality, and 20 moreGender and Sexuality, Feminism, Neoliberalism, Qualitative Research (Education), Postfeminism, Girlhood Studies, Constructions of femininity, Friendship, School effectiveness and school improvement, Qualitative Research Methods, Gender and Media, Intersectionality, Girls' Studies, Postfeminist Popular Culture, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Sexual Politics, Moral panics and the media, Sexualization of Young Girls and Women, Schooling, and School Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Adolescents
The book Deleuze and Research Methodologies, edited by Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose, succeeds in three ways. Firstly, it offers a space where Deleuzian thinking and methodological questions intersect. This provides a fresh... more
The book Deleuze and Research Methodologies, edited
by Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose, succeeds in
three ways. Firstly, it offers a space where Deleuzian
thinking and methodological questions intersect. This
provides a fresh contribution to the literature on
research methodologies. Secondly, and importantly for
Visual Studies readers, the articles in the book invite
the researcher to reconsider concepts and techniques
such as data, survey, mapping, performativity, power
and pedagogy in the context of visual production.
Thirdly, through the overarching conceptual
discussions and the individual empirical processes of
the contributors, the book offers new perspectives on
well-used but nevertheless knotty Deleuzian concepts
such as ‘becoming’, ‘nomadic’, ‘affect’ and ‘desire’.
The book includes diverse case studies of participatory
research exploring human interaction, identification,
race, feminism and the body through specific focus
groups in different fields ranging from urban space to
nursery care. The writers discuss not only the concepts
underpinning their research but also their own
experience. Through these projects, their sets of visual
tools are transformed in inventive ways; the role of
multi-media technologies in participatory research
expands the body affect and critical thinking in both
process and analysis.
by Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose, succeeds in
three ways. Firstly, it offers a space where Deleuzian
thinking and methodological questions intersect. This
provides a fresh contribution to the literature on
research methodologies. Secondly, and importantly for
Visual Studies readers, the articles in the book invite
the researcher to reconsider concepts and techniques
such as data, survey, mapping, performativity, power
and pedagogy in the context of visual production.
Thirdly, through the overarching conceptual
discussions and the individual empirical processes of
the contributors, the book offers new perspectives on
well-used but nevertheless knotty Deleuzian concepts
such as ‘becoming’, ‘nomadic’, ‘affect’ and ‘desire’.
The book includes diverse case studies of participatory
research exploring human interaction, identification,
race, feminism and the body through specific focus
groups in different fields ranging from urban space to
nursery care. The writers discuss not only the concepts
underpinning their research but also their own
experience. Through these projects, their sets of visual
tools are transformed in inventive ways; the role of
multi-media technologies in participatory research
expands the body affect and critical thinking in both
process and analysis.
Research Interests: Visual Studies, Sociology of Children and Childhood, Participatory Research, Participatory Action Research, Research Methodology, and 10 moreEthnography, Qualitative methodology, Early Childhood Education, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Visual Methodologies, Affect (Cultural Theory), Online Research Methods, and Online ethnography
Postfeminist Education?is a must-read for scholars interested in various fields, such as gender and education, postfeminism, girls’ studies, and social research on agency. By exploring media and public discourses related to girls, gender,... more
Postfeminist Education?is a must-read for scholars interested in various fields, such as gender and education, postfeminism, girls’ studies, and social research on agency. By exploring media and public discourses related to girls, gender, and education, as well as drawing on qualitative research, the book provides an excellent, insightful, and multifaceted analysis of the sexual politics of schooling. Really well written and accessible, the book makes several important contributions to Education, Gender, and Cultural Studies: It demonstrates how distinctly postfeminist anxieties permeate debates about gender and education. In addition, it offers new theoretical and methodological approaches which bring together psychosocial, Deleuzian, and Foucauldian perspectives to study subjectivity, affect, and agency
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Education, New Media, Sociology of Education, Youth Studies, and 18 moreSocial Networking, Gender and Sexuality, Feminism, School Bullying, Postfeminism, Girlhood Studies, Constructions of femininity, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Feminist Research Methods, Femininity, Intersectionality, Psychosocial Studies, Girls' Studies, Postfeminist Popular Culture, Sex Education, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Academic achievement, and Gender and Equity In Education
If indeed we live in what Brian Massumi (2002) describes as image-saturated late capitalism, where Billboard’s ‘Woman of the Year’, Katy Perry, cheerily disclaims being a feminist while championing ‘the power of women’ (Berlatsky, 2012),... more
If indeed we live in what Brian Massumi (2002) describes as image-saturated late capitalism, where Billboard’s ‘Woman of the Year’, Katy Perry, cheerily disclaims being a feminist while championing ‘the power of women’ (Berlatsky, 2012), and where learning and living interface more rapidly within digital and virtual media spaces, educational research is in dire need of some new tools. As curricular and feminist scholar, Janet L. Miller (2013), notes, as ‘mass migrations, mass media, fragmentations, interdependencies and hybridities’ shape postmodernity, our research methodologies must, following Whitlock (2006), similarly remain ‘in transit’ potentially ‘build[ing] upon and utiliz[ing], for example, the extensive and unprecedented power and speed of cultural exchanges in the present’ (Miller, 2013). How do we get up to speed in our readings of the complex interplays of media, pedagogy, and gender, and how do we map their movements and effects within educational theory and policy? Putting to work an array of feminist, poststructural, psychosocial, and posthumanist theorists, particularly the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1984, 1987), as well as an impressive coalition of educational scholars, Jessica Ringrose (2013) has begun to assemble such a toolkit in this book, Postfeminist Education? Girls and the sexual politics of schooling. Ringrose’s book offers ‘new sociological/philosophical tools for mapping the intricacies of flow of affect and ruptures of normative capture, offering new ways of thinking about, researching and interpreting feminine subjectivity’ (p. 69). The Deleuze– Guattarian figuration of the assemblage that she deploys throughout her book is an apt conceptual framework to describe her own compilation of media and cultural analysis, policy critique, empirical work on teenaged girls, and the digital and virtual worlds they navigate, and the ways these disparate forces ‘plug into’ (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012) educational discourses.
Research Interests:
In, Postfeminist Education?, Jessica Ringrose (2013) powerfully illustrates how postfeminist media discourses have infiltrated Western educational policy and curricula. Ringrose’s book contributes significantly to the field of curriculum... more
In, Postfeminist Education?, Jessica Ringrose (2013) powerfully illustrates how postfeminist media discourses have infiltrated Western educational policy and curricula. Ringrose’s book contributes significantly to the field of curriculum studies for the ways that she knits postfeminist media exemplars, poststructural and (post) psychosocial theory, and educational policy together to demonstrate the shortcomings in current policies and practices that shape girls’ experiences in school.
Research Interests: Sociology of Education, Feminist Theory, Curriculum Studies, Media Education, Social Media, and 17 moreGender Discourse, Feminism, School Bullying, Postfeminism, Girlhood Studies, Gender and education, Feminism(s), Critical sociology and politics of education, Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Leadership, Teacher leadership, informal social and political networks in schools, cultures and Policy development, Education and Social Policy, Achievement Gaps, Girls' Studies, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Educational Policy Studies, Girls Education, and Sexualization of Young Girls and Women
Weighing in on the question “has feminism gone too far?” is a recent book by Jessica Ringrose, Postfeminist Education?: Girls and the Sexual Politics of Schooling. Instead of merely offering a critique of so-called postfeminism, Ringrose... more
Weighing in on the question “has feminism gone too far?” is a recent book by Jessica Ringrose, Postfeminist Education?: Girls and the Sexual Politics of Schooling. Instead of merely offering a critique of so-called postfeminism, Ringrose offers a fastidious defense of feminism and a discussion as to why feminist critiques are perhaps more salient now than ever. Ringrose explores and critiques three postfeminist panics over girls and girlhood that circulate widely in the international media and popular culture: (1) the boy crisis; (2) female aggression; and (3) the premature sexualization of girls. What makes this book different from other postfeminist writings is that Ringrose examines these panics in the context of schooling and educational policy to illustrate how they have impacted practices in areas such as academic achievement, anti-bullying programming, and sex education.
Research Interests: Sociology of Education, Sexualities education, Feminism, School Bullying, Qualitative Research, and 10 moreGenders and Sexualities, Postfeminism, Girlhood Studies, Constructions of femininity, Gender and education, Sex Education, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Qualitative Methodologies, Academic achievement, and Moral panics and the media
"One of the central aims of Ringrose’s new book is to create a more nuanced way of understanding how young girls and women are located within a knotted array of entanglements and ‘assemblages’, embodied by the cultural figures of the... more
"One of the central aims of Ringrose’s new book is to create a more nuanced way of understanding how young girls and women are located within a knotted array of entanglements and ‘assemblages’, embodied by the cultural figures of the successful girl, the mean girl and the sexy girl. First, the ‘successful girl’ seems to underscore all three figures, as the (white, middle class) girl who is deemed to have benefited too much from the feminist movement. She is a girl whose success, while located at the perfectly neoliberal individual level, has resulted in a broader feminisation of cultural space, to the point where sexism is now a problem faced by boys. In the second figure, Ringrose develops previous work in Feminism and Psychology (Ringrose, 2006), expertly demonstrating the classed bias of the ‘mean girl’. The middle class mean girl’s psychological and indirect aggression has been normalised, so that this normalisation is placed in contrast to the assumed working class violent girl, with Ringrose drawing into this analysis the 2011 London Riot’s media focus on ‘Riot Girls’ (yet another media recuperation of a feminist movement) as symbols of femininity gone wrong. Finally the ‘sexy girl’ is a figure who is pathologised within the saturating rhetoric of the ‘sexualisation of culture’, which requires girls to maintain an image of white middle classed innocence, and yet these girls are at the same time provided with opportunities for their bodies to become a locus of desire and erotic capital. On the one hand girls are seen as the citizens of the future, and yet their sexuality is regarded as dangerous and devious, so that any real discussion of female pleasure (in for example sex education) is regulated and rendered
invisible through calls to roll back misplaced feminist notions of ‘sexual liberation’."
invisible through calls to roll back misplaced feminist notions of ‘sexual liberation’."
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology of Education, Feminist Theory, Domestic Violence, and 36 morePsychotherapy, Literature, Popular Culture, Queer Theory, Subjectivities, Eating Disorders, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Gender, Social Media, Feminism, Qualitative Research, Body Image, Media, Postfeminism, Constructions of femininity, Gender and education, Gender and Media, Cybercultures, Poststructuralist Theory, Film, Counseling, Identity, Youth, Girls' Studies, Postfeminist Popular Culture, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Dieting, Critical Social Research, Girls Education, Media and identity, Self Representation, Women and Food/eating, Substantive: Young Masculinities, Femininities and Sexualities, and Contemporary and Historical Sexualisation Debates
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Feminist Sociology, Gender Studies, Communication, Media Studies, and 30 moreSociology of Education, Journalism, Feminist Theory, Literature, Popular Culture, Queer Theory, Critical Pedagogy, Development communication, Sexuality, Critical Race Theory, Media Education, Media Literacy, Violence Against Women, Social Justice in Education, Media, Latin American social movements, Postfeminism, Girlhood Studies, Gender and education, Transnational Feminism, Poststructuralist Theory, Film, Media Research, Community Education, Social Communication, Media Impact and Effects and Usages, Alternate Media, Postcolonial feminisms, Human Rights and Social Justice, and Resistance Formation
Research Interests: Communication, Media Studies, Sociology of Education, Journalism, Development communication, and 15 moreMedia Education, Media Literacy, Education Policy, Feminism, Media, Postfeminism, Girlhood Studies, Gender and education, Feminist Research Methods, Media Research, Girls' Studies, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Social Communication, Media Impact and Effects and Usages, and Alternate Media
Research Interests: Social Change, Women's Studies, Social Justice, Narrative Methods, Whiteness Studies, and 16 morePoststructuralist Feminist Theory, Object Relations, Constructions of femininity, Social Inclusion, Relational Psychoanalysis, Feminist Research Methods, Feminist Pedagogy (Women s Studies), Critical Whiteness Studies, Anti-Racism, Psychosocial Studies, Poststructural Methodologies, Anti-Racist Pedagogies, Practice Based Approaches to the Study of Knowing, Learning and Change In Organisations, Higher Education Feminist Studies of Science and Technology, and Collaborative Action Research Methodologies
In this paper we consider the current rise of fourth wave social media feminisms as pedagogical platforms for challenging everyday sexism and rape culture, exploring the complex dynamics through which teen girls are taking up, negotiating... more
In this paper we consider the current rise of fourth wave social media feminisms as pedagogical platforms for challenging everyday sexism and rape culture, exploring the complex dynamics through which teen girls are taking up, negotiating and performing on and offline feminism in and around school. We explore social media sites as spaces of potential activism (Hands, 2011) and of conflict and hostility expressed through trolling and e-bile (Jane, 2014, Shaw, 2014, Rightler-McDaniels & Hendrikson, 2014). Drawing on theories of networked affect (Hillis et al., 2015), affective publics (Papacharissi, 2015) and social media relational affective assemblages (Ringrose and Coleman, 2013) we consider how teen aged girls navigate a Twitter feminist assemblage within and outside of school. , We document the ways teen feminists use social media like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr to directly challenge rape culture including online trolling, exploring the affective affordances of tweeting and posting including uses of hashtags, emojis, memes, images and more.
Research Interests:
Current research and policy conversations on school climate and bullying predominantly focus on student victimization; correlations between victimization and negative psychological, social, and educational outcomes; and schools’... more
Current research and policy conversations on school climate and bullying predominantly focus on student victimization; correlations between victimization and negative psychological, social, and educational outcomes; and schools’ responsibility to protect vulnerable students. These conversations reduce complexities of peer-to-peer aggression to “anti- social behaviour where one student wields power over [a victim]” (Walton, 2011, p.131). In this symposium we argue overt violence termed “bullying” is the surface-level effect of heteronormative cultures that provide social benefits for policing non-normative sexualities and gender expressions (Payne, 2007). Targeting others for their failure to “do” gender and (hetero)sexuality “right” is a learned mechanism for improving or affirming one’s own social status as well as re-affirming the “rightness” and “naturalness” of the gender “rules”. Those outside the hegemonic norm are “policed by their peers and denied access to social power and popularity, while those who do conform are ‘celebrated’” (Payne & Smith, 2012, p.188; Ngo, 2010). Papers in this symposium seek to contribute to these debates by exploring different approaches to understanding the ways in which heteronormative expectations for gender compliance circulate through school spaces across international contexts of USA, UK and Australia.
Research Interests:
In this chapter, we explore how young people use social media to challenge what they position as rape culture in schools and online. In the first part of the chapter we draw on our research with a feminist group in a London secondary... more
In this chapter, we explore how young people use social media to challenge what they position as rape culture in schools and online. In the first part of the chapter we draw on our research with a feminist group in a London secondary school to explore how young people navigate sexual harassment, victim blaming, slut-shaming, rape jokes, cyberflashing, and other forms masculine sexual entitlement online and in school. Next we outline through discussion of research in two further schools how we have used these research findings to build pedagogical interventions in the form of school guidance and lesson plans on digital defence and feminist activism with the charity School of Sexuality Education.
Research Interests:
PhEmaterialism PhEmaterialism is a term that refers to emerging research methodologies in education exploring intersections of feminist community building, theorizing, learning, and activism in education (Ringrose, Warfield & Zarabadi,... more
PhEmaterialism PhEmaterialism is a term that refers to emerging research methodologies in education exploring intersections of feminist community building, theorizing, learning, and activism in education (Ringrose, Warfield & Zarabadi, 2018). The mash-up "PhEmaterialism" broken down combines theoretical approaches drawing on posthumanism ("ph") and new materialisms ("materialism") with a specific focus on activating the feminist ("phem") implications of how these theories are generating new forms of educational research and equity, bespoken by the capitalized "E." The 'feminal' (rather than seminal) foremothers of this approach are the feminist philosophers Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, and Jane Bennett and physicist-philosopher Karen Barad whose pivotal conceptual contributions we explore in this entry. PhEmaterialist research works primarily to: • address ethical urgencies and questions of equity in the age of the Anthropocene • decenter the human from a privileged and extractivist position in the world • attend the agencies of all matter and materialities • attune to more-than-human affects, sensations, and non-linguistic modes of communication, transmission, and pedagogy • explore complex relationalities between humans and non-/other-than-humans • experiment with entanglements of feminist art, activism, community-building, pedagogy, research, and theorizing • enliven the possibilities of what academic research can do as it intra-acts with a range of stakeholders (policy makers, pressure groups, politicians, NGOs etc.) inside and outside of the formal academy Mobilizing both posthuman and new materialism frameworks (approaches that are sometimes taken separately), PhEmaterialism works to imagine new research practices in education specifically. This approach enables us to attend to how posthuman entanglements often intensify larger social stratifications and power asymmetries along intersectional lines. In other words, the human-generated effects of the Anthropocene do not affect human and non-humans uniformly, but often exacerbate ecological and social impacts on particular bodies (human and beyond) and in particular places and spaces (such as sites reeling from settler-colonialism, post-/industrialism, and late-capitalist profitizing) as well as deepen social inequities and violences around constructions of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, religion, among other social stratifications, and their multiple intersections. For example, Rosi Braidotti's (2013) posthuman feminism decenters the human as a sole, or primary, source of agency, assailing humanist intellectual legacies that position the human as the "measure of all things" (p.13). Humanist modes of thought have championed the human as exceptional, sovereign, and self-contained and positioned in extractivist, and often exploitative, relationships of mastery to the 'natural' world and other humans and non-humans.
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Twitter is repeatedly positioned as a space of hostility for women with research identifying women being disproportionate targets of misogynist ‘e-bile’ and trolling. Social media in general is presented largely as a space of... more
Twitter is repeatedly positioned as a space of hostility for women with research identifying women being disproportionate targets of misogynist ‘e-bile’ and trolling. Social media in general is presented largely as a space of distraction, and gendered and sexualised risk, addiction, and harm for young people evident in widespread mobile phone regulation and banning at secondary schools in UK and internationally. Use of Twitter amongst school aged children remains under-researched. In this brief chapter, we explore how despite the negative associations of Twitter with cyberbullying and ‘cyberhate’ this platform also offers the possibility of consciousness raising, solidarity and empowerment amongst young people. Specifically, we explore how teenaged feminist girls use the digital affordances of Twitter to connect their personal experiences of sexism and sexual harassment at school to wider cultural critiques of rape culture creating mediated affective solidarities.
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This paper explores the views of young people aged 12-14 on gender diversity, drawing upon school-based qualitative data from a study conducted in England in 2015-16. Although earlier feminist and queer research in schools often found... more
This paper explores the views of young people aged 12-14 on gender diversity, drawing upon school-based qualitative data from a study conducted in England in 2015-16. Although earlier feminist and queer research in schools often found evidence of variable local gender cultures and gender non-conformity, we argue that the contemporary context, with its increasing global awareness of gender diversity, offers young people significant new ways of learning about and doing gender. Findings reveal that many young people have expanded vocabularies of gender identity/expression; critical reflexivity about their own positions; and principled commitments to gender equality, gender diversity and the rights of gender and sexual minorities. We also show how young people are negotiating wider cultures of gendered and sexual violence. Schools are providing some spaces and learning opportunities to support gender and sexual diversity. However, overall it appears that young people’s immediate social cultural worlds are constructed in such a way that gender binary choices are frequently inevitable, from school uniforms and toilets to sports cultures and friendships. Our conclusion touches on the implications of our findings for how educational practitioners, external agencies and young people can address gender rights, equality and justice in schools and beyond.
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This paper explores the views of young people aged 12-14 on gender diversity, drawing upon school-based qualitative data from a study conducted in England in 2015-16. Although earlier feminist and queer research in schools often found... more
This paper explores the views of young people aged 12-14 on gender diversity, drawing upon school-based qualitative data from a study conducted in England in 2015-16. Although earlier feminist and queer research in schools often found evidence of variable local gender cultures and gender non-conformity, we argue that the contemporary context, with its increasing global awareness of gender diversity, offers young people significant new ways of learning about and doing gender. Findings reveal that many young people have expanded vocabularies of gender identity/expression; critical reflexivity about their own positions; and principled commitments to gender equality, gender diversity and the rights of gender and sexual minorities. We also show how young people are negotiating wider cultures of gendered and sexual violence. Schools are providing some spaces and learning opportunities to support gender and sexual diversity. However, overall it appears that young people’s immediate social cultural worlds are constructed in such a way that gender binary choices are frequently inevitable, from school uniforms and toilets to sports cultures and friendships. Our conclusion touches on the implications of our findings for how educational practitioners, external agencies and young people can address gender rights, equality and justice in schools and beyond.
Research Interests:
Sexting is defined as “the creation and sharing of personal sexual images or texts messages via mobile phones or internet applications, including Facebook, Snapchat and email” (Hasinoff, 2015: 1). Sexting has attracted media attention,... more
Sexting is defined as “the creation and sharing of personal sexual images or texts messages via mobile phones or internet applications, including Facebook, Snapchat and email” (Hasinoff, 2015: 1). Sexting has attracted media attention, public concern, and research and policy focus when involving young people (particularly those under the age of 18), a phenomenon termed ‘youth sexting’. In most western democracies, such as the UK, Australia and the US, youth sexting – specifically the production and exchange of sexual images of under 18s – is prohibited under child pornography legislation (Moran-Ellis, 2012). Anyone producing, storing or distributing such images may be criminalised, including the subject of the images, who are classed as having produced child pornography. Dominant representations of youth sexting have tended to adopt a ‘risk and deviance’ framework that focus on the illegality and ill-effects of non-consensual youth sexting (Döring, 2014). Young people are often constructed as impulsive, misguided and naïve about the supposed inherent risks of youth sexting and encouraging youth to abstain from sexting has been the main legal and educational message (Moran-Ellis, 2012).
Research Interests: Feminist Sociology, Sociology of Children and Childhood, Digital Media, Qualitative methodology, Children's Media, and 7 moreChildren's Rights, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, Pornification Culture, Sexualisation Culture, of Children and Young People, Porn Chic, Pornography, Sexting, Digital Rights, Youth Sexuality, and Digital Health
In this chapter we explore how public feelings are constituted around imaginaries of British Muslim schoolgirls. We map various articulations that contribute to the formation of public feelings about Muslim girls and women as one... more
In this chapter we explore how public feelings are constituted around imaginaries of British Muslim schoolgirls. We map various articulations that contribute to the formation of public feelings about Muslim girls and women as one component of the securitization of the United Kingdom (UK) state’s engagement with Muslim communities. First, we argue that mainstream media coverage of ISIS terrorist attacks and global geopolitical meetings, talks, and decisions enables the formation of particular public feelings about Muslims that over-code them as “risky other.” Muslim girls and women are typically either constructed as invisible or positioned as victims and without “agency” in relation to dominant constructions of warring male Muslims. However, in 2015 the attempted “flight” of three UK Muslim schoolgirls to Syria and Islamic State camps set in motion a moral media panic over the radicalization of Muslim girls in London (Barnett 2015). Other headlines which followed, such as “Isis Supporters Offering Cash to British Girls as Young as 14 to Become Jihadi Brides in Syria” (Dearden 2014), point to the explicitly public fear around the sexual exploitation of British Muslim schoolgirls at the hands of Muslim men. As Judith Butler (2008) pointed out in relation to Islamaphobia, Western feminism is co-opted into a discourse of “protecting girls” against culturally backward racialized and religioned men in ways that encourage and legitimize racism and feelings of omnipotence over and against the Muslim others with new affective formations around Muslim girls. Indeed, also noteworthy are ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) advertisings such as “Cover-ed Girl, Because I’m Worth It” (Havlicek 2015), which draw upon these Westernized constructions and use them strategically. This ISIS advertisement facilitates a new turn in the recognition of Muslim girls’ sexuality; the former passive silenced Muslim female bodies are marketized via ISIS’s social media and then recirculated, cultivating a national news media panic and fear of girls who are “groomed” to become brides of Jihadis, proliferating the threat of the reproduction of terrorism.
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In this chapter we explore how public feelings are constituted around imaginaries of British Muslim schoolgirls. We map various articulations that contribute to the formation of public feelings about Muslim girls and women as one... more
In this chapter we explore how public feelings are constituted around imaginaries of British Muslim schoolgirls. We map various articulations that contribute to the formation of public feelings about Muslim girls and women as one component of the securitization of the United Kingdom (UK) state’s engagement with Muslim communities. Throughout this chapter we explore the construction of “jihadi bride” and the way it circulates in the mass media, specifically considering how “bride” invokes an eroticized and sexualized interest in Muslim femininity. Indeed, the sexual agency of these girls is what is of the utmost interest to the Western consumer of these images, conjectured through two questions: Are they willing participants in events? Or are they hapless victims to be rescued? We investigate these questions and some of the affective complexities of the public feelings generated by constituting notions of Muslim girls’ femininity and sexuality.. Affective moral panics generate public support and moral legitimization for political actions, policies, and guidance across civil society, including schools. Indeed, these wider public and media-fueled discourses have informed the Prevent strategy in British schools, a form of vague regulatory guidance implemented to profile and surveil students on the basis of identifying and stopping “radicalization” and “extremism.” We explore some examples of the media coverage to show how it positions Muslim girls in relation to the threat of radicalization. Finally, we present some tentative findings about how UK Muslim schoolgirls themselves intra-act, negotiate, and even challenge these media discourses and school policies, drawing on interview data from a pilot research project in a London school.
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In this chapter we explore the first author's experiences of 'going viral' for reporting a sexual assault-and subsequently, having been labeled a " celebrity victim " by a mainstream media outlet-and the second author's experience of... more
In this chapter we explore the first author's experiences of 'going viral' for reporting a sexual assault-and subsequently, having been labeled a " celebrity victim " by a mainstream media outlet-and the second author's experience of having her feminist academic Twitter profile aggressively trolled. The Internet presents new forms of mediated space where women have created platforms to report their experiences of sexual assault and fight back against gender and sexual violence and rape culture (Rentschlar, 2015), whilst simultaneously offering new and often anonymous, pathways for misogyny and abuse to proliferate and spread (Ging, 2016; Jane, 2017; Phipps et al., 2017). We examine how prominent anti-feminist discourses that undermine discussions of sexual violence online operate and contextualize this discussion in relation to the exacerbation of hate speech surrounding the Donald Trump presidency. But we also demonstrate how feminist activism and resistance to rape culture has grown, exploring the connectivity and collectivity enabled through social media platforms. We examine the recent dramatic growth of the Facebook group, Pantsuit Nation and by way of social media, the coordination and activation of the Women's March on January 21 st 2017, both of which fought back against the normalizing sexual violence, a theme that permeated the US election.
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In this chapter we look at three different manifestations of social media feminist humour that challenge rejections of feminism or anti-feminism. First we look at the hugely popular twitter account @NoToFeminism, which posts witty... more
In this chapter we look at three different manifestations of social media feminist humour that challenge rejections of feminism or anti-feminism. First we look at the hugely popular twitter account @NoToFeminism, which posts witty rejoinders to anti-feminist discourses, and was initiated specifically to parody the #womenagainstfeminism movement. Next, we examine the twitter hashtag #FeministsAreUgly, to consider how feminists have intervened into the sexist logic that women are feminists because they are sexually undesirable to men. We consider the affordances of the hashtag to stimulate discussion and debate around conventional beauty norms and also how hashtags can be co-opted in ways that mutate far outside its original aims. The hashtag was created in 2014 as a way for people of colour to speak back against beauty standards and cultural privilege and we problematize how it has now potentially become a site of enforcing, and validating the exact same beauty norms it was designed to interrogate. Finally, we explore ‘misandry’ Twitter hashtags and Tumblr posts which ironically present female superiority in an attempt to parody anti-feminist claims that feminists are man-hating. This tongue in cheek action can be considered a way of mocking wilful misunderstandings of feminism. We also, however, consider whether some of the memes celebrate violence against men in gender binary and essentialising ways. Overall we argue that social media affordances offer women opportunities to defend feminism, in novel and exciting ways that move us beyond simplistic claims that we are in any way living in a postfeminist moment without sustained feminist political dialogue and critique.
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Whilst acknowledging these understandings of online spaces as risky conflict zones for women and girls, in this chapter we explore how social media sites also offer the possibility of feminist solidarity and empowerment through sharing... more
Whilst acknowledging these understandings of online spaces as risky conflict zones for women and girls, in this chapter we explore how social media sites also offer the possibility of feminist solidarity and empowerment through sharing experiences, call out culture and hashtag activism all of which have challenged sexism and sexual violence. Social media offers various platforms for victims to be heard and supported in a multitude of ways and here we explore how the affordances of social media have enabled a wide range of digital content that provides challenges to male cultures of sexual violence. We discuss the resistant force of “call out culture” which is a prominent feature of fourth-wave feminism, and involves the process of women collectively shedding light on injustice by calling out misogyny and sexism. With the virtual domain, feminists now have an amplified voice and have enabled a networked community to speak back with, and amongst and it is here that we posit that feminists are increasingly using humour to resist and disrupt normative aggressive masculinity, male-entitlement, and male sexual dominance. We specifically explore trends in social media feminist humour in responding to: anti-feminism and misandry, manspreading and dick pics. Gallivan (1992) suggests the way feminist humour differs from normative sexist variants, in that it is ‘humour which reveals and ridicules the absurdity of gender stereotypes and gender based inequalities.’ We consider how using humour to subvert sexism differs from other forms of reacting to and exposing sexism and sexual violence, aiming to do something more than document but rather to change the meaning attributed to the reality being documented. By outlining some of the specific ways in which humour is employed to combat sexism and sexual violence to turn it on its head, we aim to contribute to the little understood variety and forms of shared and networked social media feminist humour.
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This chapter explores how a feminist posthuman and new materialism research framework can help us to rethink and rework sexual regulation and harassment in secondary schools. We consider two case studies from our joint research project... more
This chapter explores how a feminist posthuman and new materialism research framework can help us to rethink and rework sexual regulation and harassment in secondary schools. We consider two case studies from our joint research project 'Feminism in Schools: Mapping Impact in Practice'. Drawing on theoretical and methodological insights from Deleuze and Guattari, Rosi Braidotti and Karen Barad, we outline our ideas of enacting 'posthuman feminist intra-activist research assemblages'. Using a diffractive lens to bring disparate moments of our research data together, we explore the fleshy materialism of phallogocentric touch, sound, and space. Politically, we engage with Barad's notion of researcher 'response-ability' to consider what can and cannot be spoken about, and what is blocked, rerouted , and transformed in relation to sexualities research in secondary schools.
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To teachers, students and researchers in the field of gender and education, the findings in the recent report " Sexism in Schools: 'It's just everywhere' were not surprising. The study, commissioned by the National Education Union and the... more
To teachers, students and researchers in the field of gender and education, the findings in the recent report " Sexism in Schools: 'It's just everywhere' were not surprising. The study, commissioned by the National Education Union and the campaign group UK Feminista, found that more than a third (37%) of female students had personally experienced some form of sexual harassment at school and one in three teachers (32%) witnessed sexual harassment in their school on at least a weekly basis. The study, from Warwick University, also reported that 66% of female students and 37% of male students in mixed-sex sixth forms have experienced or witnessed the use of sexist language in school and a quarter of all secondary teachers say they witness gender stereotyping and discrimination on a daily basis. Only 14% of students who experienced sexual harassment reported it to a teacher; less than a quarter (22%) of female students at mixed-sex schools think their school takes sexism seriously enough and 78% of secondary school students are unsure or not aware of any policies and practices in their school for preventing sexism. Last year, the government's first Women and Equalities Committee Inquiry and Report into sexual harassment and violence in schools concluded that children and young people's experiences of sexual harassment in British schools had reached a crisis point and said schools must address entrenched ideas about gender used to justify sexual harassment. Whilst there have since been moves to tackle this problem through legislation to make relationships and sex education mandatory in schools, there is still no detail on what will covered in the curriculum. Wales, on the other hand, has just released an extensive report on the future of the Sex and Relationships curriculum, including examples from practice in primary and secondary schools. Last week's report has similar findings to that of the committee – but will it make any difference? In the current climate of austerity, Brexit and post-truth politics will more statistics about high rates of sexual violence change the minds of politicians and educational policy makers? We find it salient that such a report comes at the same time as the unprecedented media attention to sexual harassment, violence and rape culture seen in the tsunami of public engagement with the #MeToo movement. But the possibility of feminist activism happening inside schools is largely ignored in public debate. Is this because of the #MeToo focus upon an adult demographic? We think it is important to join up the dots connecting how mass feminist movement is generating change and affecting young people themselves. Highlighingt young people's gender and sexuality activisms Researchers, policy makers and pressure groups alike should take stock and evaluate what schools, teachers and students are already doing to challenge sexism
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This is a powerpoint pdf that accompanied our verbal performance of the PhEmaterialist keynote presented at Rosi Braidotti's summer school, University of Utrecht (August, 2019) on the theme of Posthuman Knowledge.
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Following public outcry over a body-shaming advertisement in the London transportation network in 2015, the mayor of London commissioned a multimedia documentary-style study that involved sixteen interviews with women as they commuted... more
Following public outcry over a body-shaming advertisement in the London transportation network in 2015, the mayor of London commissioned a multimedia documentary-style study that involved sixteen interviews with women as they commuted throughout London; two “talk-back” art projects with twenty-two schoolgirls; and a survey of 2,012 Londoners. This article explores our experience of undertaking this project as a mixed-methods, intersectional feminist research process. We discuss the complex relationship between feminist counterpublics and public feminisms and how we negotiated working with a range of stakeholders in our attempt to reshape public debates over gender and advertising. We explore a shift in which women, once positioned as passive props for the male gaze, have been reimagined through postfeminist modes of confident address and forms of “femvertising,” which challenge women to live up to new hybrid forms of racialized, sexualized bodily ideals. Our statistical findings demonstrate an overwhelming public dislike of sexualized advertising, and our in-depth interviewing, focus groups, and collaging methodologies show how diverse women experience new forms of racialized sexualization as problematic rather than as evidence of diversity and inclusion. We argue that by explicitly adopting a feminist intersectional lens, we can foreground the racist and sexist force of ads and their impact on a range of diverse women and girls, documenting the nonconsensual and assaultive nature of public advertising and, therefore, the need for greater accountability from corporate and government stakeholders.
Research Interests: Race and Racism, Advertising, Gender and Sexuality, Advertising and Media, Feminism, and 15 moreBody Image, Survey Research, Advertising and Gender, Postfeminism, Feminist activism, Collage, Feminist Research Methods, Mixed Methods Research, Arts-Based Research, Interviewing, Intersectionality, Digital Activism, Sexualization of Young Girls and Women, Publics and Counterpublics, and Femvertising
stARTing out As we (the four guest editors) worked toward assembling the editorial introduction to this Special Issue, we exchanged many emails, texts, Facebook prompts, Skype calls, and, when possible, met in coffee shops to work through... more
stARTing out
As we (the four guest editors) worked toward assembling the editorial introduction to this Special Issue, we exchanged many emails, texts, Facebook prompts, Skype calls, and, when possible, met in coffee shops to work through our thinking. During one video call, we contemplated the fraught issue of how to introduce ourselves into the editorial, discussing various modes such as autobiography, figurations, poems, and artwork (see Figure 1). Figure 1. T(og)ethering (PhArt by Emma Renold, 2019).
We heatedly debated how to write collaboratively as a complex exercise in cutting-together-apart (Barad, 2003). We struggled with sharing and negotiating boundaries—questioning the meaning of introducing ourselves, to what end, and what would be response-able. Throughout this editing journey we have stayed with all of the “trouble” presented by our mixing and mingling with one another and working out our relationships toeach of the papers in this Special Issue, as we show, tell, and share in what follows.
As we (the four guest editors) worked toward assembling the editorial introduction to this Special Issue, we exchanged many emails, texts, Facebook prompts, Skype calls, and, when possible, met in coffee shops to work through our thinking. During one video call, we contemplated the fraught issue of how to introduce ourselves into the editorial, discussing various modes such as autobiography, figurations, poems, and artwork (see Figure 1). Figure 1. T(og)ethering (PhArt by Emma Renold, 2019).
We heatedly debated how to write collaboratively as a complex exercise in cutting-together-apart (Barad, 2003). We struggled with sharing and negotiating boundaries—questioning the meaning of introducing ourselves, to what end, and what would be response-able. Throughout this editing journey we have stayed with all of the “trouble” presented by our mixing and mingling with one another and working out our relationships toeach of the papers in this Special Issue, as we show, tell, and share in what follows.