At the Centre for Gender Studies you will find a group of people who are excited about their research and who are committed to interdisciplinarity and recognising intersectionality.
The students, staff and visitors who have been with us over the years have come from all over the world and we’re grateful for the rich variety of perspectives they bring with them.
Many of our events are open to the general public. Feel free to come along and be a part of the conversation.
The CGS community is international.
You can find out more about the research areas of members of the Centre either by coming along to an event or movie night and saying hello, or by browsing the research portal on the main university website. Many researchers associated with the centre have also published their research as part of the Routledge book series, Transformations.
Directors
The current directors of the Centre for Gender Studies are Shakthi Nataraj, Debra Ferreday and Dany Girard
Shakthi is a sociocultural anthropologist and a Lecturer of Sociology at Lancaster University. Her work theorizes gender as a function of labour, language, merit and economic exchange, as it emerges amongst queer and trans rights activists, as well as sex workers in India. Prior to graduate school she worked as a freelance writer, trainer, researcher and translator with development projects in Tamil Nadu. She also has an illustration practice called ‘The Artful Anthropologist’.
Debra is a Senior Lecturer and feminist cultural theorist working on digital media, film, TV, celebrity culture, performance and popular music. She is particularly interested in the intersections between gender and sexuality studies, race, disability and discourses of mental distress and mental wellbeing in popular media. Her work is intersectional, interdisciplinary, and concerned with complex entanglements between the personal and the political, and with the way power structures are internalised and resisted in relation to media and popular culture.
Dany is a Senior Teaching Associate in Media. Their PhD thesis mapped the evolution of paratextual queer fiction (slash fan fiction) being produced in conjunction to the original series of Star Trek. Their research interests revolve around queerbaiting, queer(ed) and trans bodies in horror TV and film, feminine expression and pop culture. Their book New Queer Television: From Marginalization to Mainstreamification (Intellect, 2025), co-edited with Tom Brassington and Debra Ferreday, explores dynamics in relation to contemporary queer representation.
As you can see from just these two example, there is a broad range of interests and expertise within the Centre for Gender Studies – and always room for more!
Previous directors of the Centre include:
Sara Ahmed
Anne-Marie Fortier
Gail Lewis
Celia Lury
Maureen McNeil
Lynne Pearce
Celia Roberts
Vicky Singleton
Laura Clancy
Bev Skeggs
Jackie Stacey
Imogen Tyler
Sylvia Walby
You can click through to profile pages for each of them to find out more about their past and present research and activities.
MA and PhD students
Postgraduate research and education is one of the Centre’s core activities. The Centre offers single and combined Masters programmes, where students and researchers are taught by an interdisciplinary team of leading experts on their field. In their turn, former MA and PhD Students are now researching and teaching across the world. Our current postgraduate research students and their research are listed on our directory.
If you are thinking of undertaking a PhD in gender studies or women’s studies, our doctoral research training is provided by one of the best Centres for feminist research and gender studies in the UK. As a PhD student registered in the Centre for Gender Studies, you will have an office space located alongside centre staff – which includes some of the best-known feminist researchers in the world.
We offer ESRC and AHRC recognized routes for postgraduate research training (MA plus PhD) in the North West Doctoral Training Partnerships (NWDTP).
Please use the contact form to find out more about postgraduate research with us.
