Centre staff pursue active research programs focused on gender, sex and power with keen interests in gender and addiction, sexuality, feminist cultural and media studies and women’s employment and families. Many Centre staff are involved in collaborative research with colleagues within Sociology, in PSI, the Faculty of Arts and across the scholarly community. Currently JaneMaree Maher is working with colleagues Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser (Curtin University), Professors Alan Peterson (Monash Sociology) and Jan Wright of University of Wollongong and Dr Claire Tanner on critical approaches to childhood obesity. Amy Shields Dobson is working on gender and social media with colleagues here and overseas.
The Centre has a strong Postgraduate Research Program with students pursuing a variety of research topics. Centre graduates are currently working in academic posts within Australia and overseas. In recent years, graduates of the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research have received awards for outstanding thesis work including Dr Sally Newman (Women’s Studies 2008) joint winner of the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies PhD Award in 2010 and Dr Karolyne Quinn (Women’s Studies 2011) who won the Mollie Holman Medal in 2011.
We foster an active research environment through conferences, symposia, workshops and other collaborative activities. Each year, we host distinguished colleagues from many other countries and institutions.
Our Current Research Programs
We welcome opportunities for collaboration in our research areas.
Please contact the Centre Director, Associate Professor JaneMaree Maher for further information.
Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser (Curtin University), Professor Jan Wright, Associate Professor JaneMaree Maher, Professor Alan Petersen and Dr Claire Tanner Contemporary medicine is locating the origins of common health problems such as diabetes, heart disease and bowel cancer earlier and earlier in the lives of individuals. As a result, scrutiny of the diet and lifestyle of ... Read more
These projects address the intersection of gender and criminality with a focus on the ways in which the institutions of law and justice draw on and reinforce gendered ideologies. Sex Work: Labour, mobility and sexual services (Routledge 2013)Associate Professor JaneMaree Maher, Professor Sharon Pickering and Dr Alison Gerard Sex work has always attracted policy, public and prurient ... Read more- Project Description and Aims This project was prompted by increasing public concern over Australia ‘s falling national birthrate and on-going political debate regarding the role and provision of paid maternity leave and other initiatives designed to encourage or support those Australians planning or raising families. We looked at the specific groups in contemporary Australia : women or ... Read more
Dr Amy Shields Dobson, Professor Denise Cuthbert, with students from ATS3852, 201 Completed with third-year Sociology and Gender Studies students, this project explores issues of gender identity in young people’s engagement with social network sites. Supervised by the chief investigators, students analysed gender discourses in young people’s expressions of identity in a range of online environments. ... Read more- Dr Amy Shields Dobson This book is currently being written. It examines the phenomenon of highly assertive, hetero-sexualised, individualised and often ‘traditionally unfeminine’ self-representation by Australian young women on the social network site MySpace, drawing primarily on theoretical work from the disciplines of feminist media and performance studies. There is an assumption underlying much early second-wave feminist ... Read more
This project documents and analyses the ‘cam girl’ phenomenon around the turn of the 21st Century. It provides a typology of cam girl performance styles and locates the cam girl phenomenon within popular discourses of ‘girl power’ and DIY cultural practices, interrogating the kind of self-production and self-commodification encouraged of, and engaged in, by ... Read more- In the struggle to change the place ascribed to women in culture and language, the women’s movement has challenged traditional divisions between High Art and mass culture and the compartmentalisation of knowledge between disciplines. Arguing that cultural forms as diverse as the Page Three pin-up and the female nude in Renaissance painting articulate similar ... Read more
- “Often in media and policy debates about work and family, simple descriptions of work-life balance and integration are discussed; these descriptions don’t capture the contested and often difficult negotiations within families about how to integrate employment and care. Assumptions about motherhood, fatherhood, and care need to be carefully examined to better support people in their ... Read more
