Queer Cultures

Program Leader: Associate Professor Benjamin Hanckel (ICS) and Associate Professor Lucy Nicholas (SoSS)

Photo by Vinicius "amnx" Amano on Unsplash

Queer orientations open new horizons of research. The Queer Cultures Research Program brings together researchers who are working on and interested in queer theory(ies) and queer scholarship. The Program offers a space for researchers to examine queer cultural expressions, practices and forms with empirical and theoretical registers. Beyond framing queer exclusively in terms of identity, the Program pursues queer(er) trajectories in relation to contemporary issues and concerns. Working with researchers across Western Sydney University, and with local communities, the Program considers queerness as a condition of possibility, decentring normative or ‘straight’ frameworks that often guide, situate and underpin research. In so doing, the Program extends research that has impact in and across diverse social spaces.

Extending conceptual tools across a range of disciplines, the Program aims to interrogate and make sense of oppressive contexts and conditions such as marginality and violence. Researchers draw from expertise and research leadership, including leadership in the Sexualities and Genders Research network, to investigate social issues related to health and wellbeing, inequalities and inequities. Research in the Program contributes primarily to the realisation of UN Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 10 by interrogating the origins of gender, sexuality and other forms of inequalities and their intersections, devising ways of thinking beyond them.

Evidence of Research Concentration: Research projects currently underway focus on interrogating and challenging ‘straight’ ways of being and thinking, using queer theories and queer approaches to research. Projects focus on intersectional experiences and theories such as crip sexualities; migration, ethnicity and sexuality; digital intimacies; queer ethics and sexual practices. We respond to and challenge normative ideas and frameworks that sit in tension with ‘queer(er)’ and minoritized communities’ experiences. Current projects explore experiences of violence, including lateral violence, community, (non)belonging, as well as identity making. Researchers also aim to queer approaches to policy making and health, examine the ‘science of science’, and queer the methods researchers use to respond to and interrogate everyday life.