Sexualities and Sexual Health Postgraduate Research

Sexuality, in many complex forms, pervades both the private and public world and can be the source of great pleasure, a mode of intimacy, emotional expression and erotic desire. However, it is often associated with shame, guilt, violence, risk and anxiety where the sexualised body is the object of power and concern, located within moral and religious discourses of purity and health, sin and disease. Historically, societies have sought to regulate through criminalising and pathologising sexual practices and identities. The human experience of embodiment, sexual practices, identities and communities in late modern society provide almost inexhaustible opportunities for enquiry.

We have developed a rich programme of research that thrives on interdisciplinary perspectives to illuminate the sensitive, sometimes transgressive and often marginalised elements of sexuality in daily life. The several recurrent themes are evident in our research:

• Embodiment
• Power
• Identities 
• Communities

The programme is predominantly qualitative, on ethnographies, historical, Internet, visual and narrative methods and draws on a wide range of theoretical influences to inform work that is relevant, adventurous and contributes to professional practice in health and social care.

Examples of recent and current work include 'Kölle Revisited' (Pryce and Drey) an Internet survey undertaken with Prosieben TV that is the largest study ever undertaken of German sexual values, attitudes and practices. Social exclusion is a strong theme in the research programme and studies have been done with the experience of young unaccompanied asylum seekers and sexual health (Sinha, Uppal & Pryce).

Doctoral students make a very important contribution to the programme with projects that are rooted in professional and clinical practice. Current projects include work on the:

• Social and cultural contexts of biomedical treatments for pre-mature ejaculation in Bangladeshi Muslim men (Steggall); 
• Invisibility of boys and young men in teenage pregnancy discourses (French); 
• Power, intimacy and love in men who have intentional unprotected sex (Grundy-Bowers)  
• Courtship, marriage and sexuality of young Indians of Gujarati origin living in the UK and India (Twamley)
• Transmen (male to female) identities and sexual behaviour (Benato)
• Narratives of heterosexual couples in HIV serodiscordant relationships (Rogers)