Departmental website: lse.ac.uk/genderInstitute|
Number of graduate students (full-time equivalent)
Taught: 80
Research: 11
Number of faculty (full-time equivalent): 8
RAE: 45% of the Department's research was rated world leading or internationally excellent
Location: Columbia House
About the Institute
The Gender Institute was established in 1993 to address the major intellectual challenges posed by contemporary changes in gender relations.
The Institute's graduate students come from all corners of the globe and enter gender studies from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from English or literature to political economy and development studies. This range of disciplinary backgrounds is also reflected in the background of permanent staff at the Institute, who come from geography, English and French literature, political theory, cultural studies and sociology. We run a large master's programme, with five separate degrees, and a PhD programme. Each programme is characterised by its interdisciplinary and transnational approach to gender studies, and both students and staff work exceptionally hard to maintain this two-pronged direction to maintain a creative, distinctive and innovative edge. The combined master's degrees welcome between 80 and 85 students annually, and the PhD programme has up to 15 students at a given time.
In research and teaching terms, the Institute is unique, bringing together social sciences and humanities approaches in order to address key problems in gender studies transnationally. We provide a leading role internationally in combining innovative theory and epistemology with policy concerns. Our research-led approach results in a vibrant research environment and a unique teaching programme that prepares research students for various careers within and outside of academia. We train the largest number of graduates qualifying in gender studies anywhere in Europe. We run a series of high profile events at the Institute, including public lectures, workshops and conferences, and host international scholars who are integrated into the life of the Institute.
The Gender Institute encourages active learning and full student participation in the classes we teach and our teaching methods reflect this concern. Throughout their degree programme students are introduced to a variety of modes of lecture and seminar teaching including formal lectures, integrated lecture and seminar formats and we have pioneered the use of student led facilitation models, seminars may also incorporate individual and group presentations all our teaching modes are complemented by the availability of one-to-one contact with course tutors and conveners in office hours and for dissertation supervision.
Staff and their academic interests
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Professor Mary Evans: higher education in the UK; class and inequality; gender; feminism.
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Dr Clare Hemmings: transnational sexuality studies; feminist epistemology and methodology; interdisciplinarity; feminist theory.
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Dr Marsha Henry: reproductive technologies; gender; development; South Asia and South Asian Diaspora; militarisation; peacekeeping; representation; security.
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Dr Sumi Madhok: transnational gender analysis; feminist social and political theory, particularly of autonomy; agency and human rights; vernacular rights cultures; postcoloniality; citizenship; South Asian politics; developmentalism.
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Professor Diane Perrons: inequality; regional development; globalisation; care; social reproduction; migration; new media; work; gender; social sustainability.
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Professor Anne Phillips: democracy and representation; equality; feminism; human rights; multiculturalism.
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Dr Ania Plomien: EU accession; labour market policy; employment; post-socialism; EU labour market and social policies; Europeanisation; work and care; labour market; Central Eastern Europe; gender; Poland; inequality.
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Dr Wendy Sigle-Rushton: childcare; poverty; family; gender.
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Dr Sadie Wearing: gender and feminist theory; representation; feminist film theory; aging and subjectivity in literature, culture and media.
Opportunities for research
Research currently covers six main themes relating to each of the core staff members' particular research expertise. They comprise both a thorough grounding in existing research and strong emphasis of the development of innovative, original research findings and processes. Each theme focuses on both inequalities and possibilities for social and theoretical transformation. Each theme includes more than one person within and outside of the Institute, offers research opportunities to early career researchers or research students, and comprises individual and co-operative research leading to seminars, conferences and publications. The general areas are indicated first and related funding or consultancy areas listed afterwards.
Globalisation, Development and Inequalities
This research focuses on economic and social transformation in the contemporary global context, focusing on development, inequality, paid employment and the social reproduction of daily life.
Families, Social Change, and Social Policy
Research in this theme includes analyses of individual, family, and policy responses to social, economic, and political change.
Multiculturalism and democracy
This broad area takes in the development of normative political theories of equality and democracy, insisting on the importance of a gendered perspective.
Security, development and rights
This work emphasises the importance of gender in understanding power relations globally, particularly with respect to access to development and rights.
Representation and memory
Colleagues engaged in this theme are concerned both with the lived experiences of women and men in the ageing process, and with representations of these processes and their social and cultural significance.
Sexuality and culture
Work in this theme focuses on the relationship between gender and sexuality, with a particular emphasis on local and transnational spaces and flows.
Transnational epistemology and methodology
This theme connects all those working at the Institute, providing a common concern across all research projects. What links work in all areas is an interest in how ideas and. and methods in gender studies travel across time and space, as well as how our own theories and methods might be adapted in light of shifts in global formations.
PhD applications are welcome in any of the above areas.
Opportunities for research in the pioneering field of gender studies are unparalleled. Students participate in seminars and workshops, as well as following a research training programme within the Institute. Our key research areas are feminist epistemology and methodology; Women in South Asia and Diaspora, gender and peacekeeping; feminist political economy, globalisation, gender and inequality; transnational sexuality studies, economic restructuring, new economy, work and care; feminist political theory; normative political theory; egalitarianism; multiculturalism; gender and autonomy; gender, sexuality and ageing; cultural memory and time; feminist film theory.
Research are a core part of research culture at the Gender Institute, and their PhD programme is tailored both to their individual needs and to general needs, such as methodology training and engagement in professional academic life. All research students at the Institute receive core training in their first year to prepare them for their research and writing, and ongoing training across the period of the studies within and outside the Institute. The aim is to enable students to complete a PhD thesis within three to four years, or an MPhil thesis in two years.
PhD programme workshops
All PhD students attend fortnightly PhD workshops from the start of their time at the Institute, which focus on student work in progress. These are intended to provide students with continuity across their time at the Institute, build expertise in presenting and evaluating their own and other people's work, and confidence to edit and revise drafts of their work. They also generate a sense of a shared project and cohort identity, particularly since students are encouraged to focus on common problems such as methodological or design problems as well as textual issues.
GI400 and GI402
Students take a core gender theories and a core epistemology and methodology course in their first year which are intended to build theory and research practice skills. The core course introduces students to the range of theoretical frameworks available to gender studies experts, and asks what it means to use theory to explore key debates and problems (eg human rights) rather than approaching theory in an abstract way. The theory course proves invaluable in training students to think about how theory travels and what it means to take a particular position in theoretical debate. Both courses allow students to think creatively about the how to of research, not just in relation to their own project but as a central feature of all research (thus preparing them for the future). First year PhD students must attend all GI400 lectures and the whole of GI402 (including seminars and workshops).
Progression
First year students will be assessed during the first year by means of a draft chapter and a research proposal. The research proposal will follow the ESRC template and will include the research objectives, the methodology and a short research rationale to be evaluated by a review panel which will include the supervisor and adviser, plus one other academic where relevant. Students have to pass their upgrading of registration within 15 months, and are subsequently reviewed annually.
Taught programmes