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Body Transformations Research Cluster

Our work focuses predominantly on the contested site of the body, as a social, legal, medical and phenomenological place in which the self resides. We address the many discourses that surround the personal self and the body; and the rights, ownership and freedoms that are constantly being challenged, restricted or disputed.

Key areas of engagement include:

• the politics of abortion
• sexual citizenship
• the gender and sexual politics of childhood and adolescence
• the racialised politics of body modification
• the politics and practice of the transgender and transsexual body
• bioethics, embodiment and risk

Much of our work, both practical and theoretical, is framed within feminist; transgender and queer theoretical perspectives. We seek new viewpoints through participant observation and qualitative analysis of law, medicine and public policy. Understandings of the historical development of the contested nature of the body in contemporary cultures form central components of our approach. Through them we explore ways in which meanings are embedded in and through the body, and its manifestation across age, sex and gender.

We focus on the mediation of the body by individuals, communities and social movements, and through cultural forms and practices. Our work has set and informed agendas on the somatic, psychological and phenomenological nature of the body as a contested space characterised by control of choice and management of risk. By engaging with major theoretical debates on the changing forms and meanings the body - and its self assertion and personalisation through a range of innovative approaches - we aim to enhance critical understandings of body politics, in historical, contemporary and future cultures.

Members of the Body Transformations research cluster have organised a number of high profile conferences and workshops including:

• Transforming Bodies (2005)
• Congress on Sex and Gender Diversity (2004)
• Cyberwomen and Body Modification (2005)

In early 2007 we are running a conference on 'The Future of Equalities' as a lead into the publication of the Green Paper on the proposed Single Equality Act.