GSL
Gender, sexuality and law
Keele Law School has a range of socio-legal scholars working in intersections of gender, sexuality, and law (GSL). Cluster members are interested in developing theoretical debates, connecting with local communities, and engaging with law reform initiatives. Keele Law School continues to nurture GSL scholarship by creating a space for interdisciplinary collaboration across various sub-disciplines of law.
GSL cluster members are currently working on a range of exciting projects:
Felicity Adams doctoral project undertakes a queer-feminist abolitionist critique of prison law and governance to explore how transgender women constitute and are constituted by the penal system in England and Wales. Flick's PhD project is principally situated at the intersections of gender, sexuality and law, socio-legal studies, critical carceral studies and queer criminology.
Dr Fabienne Emmerich works in the field of penal sociology and is interested in the way gendered power relations in prison produce governable and ungovernable subjects and at the same time how prisoners engage in varying resistance practices to create counter or alternative subject positions. She is currently working on a book entitled The Red Army Faction in Prison: practices of isolation and resistance. In it, she is explores the production of ungovernable subjects through a spatial and temporal analysis of containment practices in prison as well as confrontational, coordinated and collective resistance practices of women and men in prison as a form of improvisation.
Fabienne also works in the field of prisoners' rights. Prisons are deeply gendered institutions that enforce a gender binary and perpetuate heteronormative gender performativity. Fabienne is interested in exploring the scope of prisoners' right to private and family life, Article 8 ECHR, with a focus on LGBTIQ prisoners who are produced as both vulnerable and threatening. She aims to critique the gender-normative and heteronormative conceptions that underpin prisoners’ rights jurisprudence in the English courts.
Dr Yossi Nehushtan is exploring the clash between religious belief and equality legislation within the context of sexual orientation, while looking into the distinction between identity and belief or way of life.
Dr Ezgi Taşcıoğlu’s research explores the role of law in the production of marginalised sexualities and gender identities. Currently, this exploration develops in two main strands: the construction of transgender citizenship in everyday life in urban Turkey, and the regulation of intellectually disabled people’s intimate lives in England and Wales. Ezgi is particularly interested in the interactions of law with social and cognitive (in)justice.
Dr Rachel Treloar employs an interdisciplinary approach to explore the intersections of gender relations, family law and social policy. Her previous research focused on gender and family law reform in the context of neoliberalism, especially on access to justice and the broader services required by families in times of crisis, and on post-separation parenting disputes. Rachel is currently exploring issues of voice in post-separation private law disputes concerning children.
Read & Resist!
Felicity Adams and Fabienne Emmerich are the co-founders and co-facilitators of the new abolitionist feminist web platform. Visit Read and Resist to find out more about how you can get involved! If you would like to find out more about the cluster, please get in touch with Fabienne Emmerich.