Events

Events in 2023 

On the other side – Threats to sexual orientation and gender identity rights around the world. Talk and panel discussion. 

Wednesday 15th March 2023 5-7pm, in-person City, University of London 

Please register in advance here.

Speaker: Philip Ayoub (Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at UCL). Chair: Timo Koch (City, University of London. Panellists: Violetta Zentai (online) (Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy at Central European University Budapest). Felipe Gonzalez Santos (online) (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Sociology, City, University of London)

In recent years, gender and sexual diversity politics have become contentious issues around the globe. Resistance to these politics has assembled a burgeoning group of organizations that identify rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity as a threat, ranging from populist radical right parties, social movements, NGOs, think tanks and foundations. Bringing together a variety of scholars working on anti-gender and far-right politics, the event investigates the collaboration among right-wing groups to contribute to broader discussion on international politics and explains how gender and sexuality shape global politics today.

Feminist Publishing: Practices, Processes, and Contemporary Challenges 

Friday 10^th March 1-6pm, in-person City University of London

Half Day Conference –  please register in advance here.

“You are what you publish” is an imperative and injunction often characterising scholarly life in today’s neoliberal university. Pressurising ‘publish or perish’ perspectives can work to discourage early-career researchers who are often unfamiliar with the practices and processes. This event aims to address this blind spot. With a focus on feminist and gender and/sexualities research, this half-day conference looks to demystify academic publishing processes in a supportive, non-competitive environment. Drawing from industry and academic expertise across the areas of book publishing, journals, open access, and grassroots feminist publishing, workshops will cover: book formats and proposal submissions; industry models; peer review processes; alternative models; and different ways to get involved with publishing.

Speakers: Professor Catherine Rottenberg (Nottingham), Dr Asiya Islam (Leeds), Dr Kyoung Kim (SOAS), Dr Kavita Maya (Royal Holloway), Professor Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths), Dr Edna Bonhomme(Silver Press), Shannon Kneis (Manchester University Press), Dr Emily Cousens (LSE), Neda Tehrani(Pluto Press), Rebekka Kiesewetter (Coventry). Keynote talk: Professor Lynne Segal (Birkbeck)

Co-organised by The Gender and Sexualities Research Centre (GSRC) at City and Manchester University Press 

Events in 2022

Queer Data Lecture by Dr Kevin Guyan

4-5.30pm Thursday 27th October

Digital Apps Workshop: New Methodological Approaches to Researching Intimacy Online

Thursday 13th October 2022 10am-12pm Online

This online event seeks to understand new approaches to studying apps and intimacy. It draws from the expertise and practical knowledge of scholars looking at the meaning of intimacy in the digital realm. The event aims to benefit and inspire fellow researchers through exchanging notes and experience on methodologies, methods, analysis, and Digital Sociology. The session will be split between 15-minute speaker presentations and audience Q&A.

Speakers: Professor Deborah Lupton (UNSW Sydney),  Professor Ben Light (Salford), Dr. Michael Dieter (Warwick),  Jason Chao (Siegen). Register here.

Revisiting Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of Place
Thursday July 21st 2pm – 3:30pm, online

This afternoon event will revisit Space Invaders in a contemporary context marked by renewed activist work and institutional attention to ‘inclusion’, alongside the optics and capitalisation of diversity and the rise of new aggressive forms of inequality. In the process, it will ask: what has the book enabled? How are people positioned as ‘space invaders’ today? What are the changing cultural contours?

Speakers:Manuela Galetto and Chiara Martucci (Sconvegno feminist collective), Agata Lisiak and Florian Duijsens (Bard, Berlin), Roshi Naidoo (Museums Association), Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmiths), Shirin Rai (Warwick), Gillian Rose (Oxford), Shela Sheikh (Goldsmiths), Melissa Strauss (Space Invaders collective). Chairs: Jo Littler (City) and Anamik Saha (Goldsmiths)

Register here.

GSRC In-person GSRC Writing Retreat

Tuesday 5th July at City University 10.30-3pm and led by City Staff members
To register, email gsrc@city.ac.uk

GSRC Online Writing Retreats

13th and 14th June, 9:30-2pm and led by City Staff members
To register, email gsrc@city.ac.uk

GSRC Research Seminar – Women’s Football as Precarious Work

Wednesday 11th May 5-6.30pm
Dr Alex Culvin (UCLAN), chaired by Dr Rachel Cohen (City)

This seminar reveals the gendered precarity that increased professionalisation of women’s football has brought and highlights the role played by players’ collective organisations in fighting for change.

Joint GSRC seminar with the British Sociological Association: Work, Employment and Economic Life Study Group @basweel. More details and event registration here.

Rebel Dykes Screening and Discussion – GSRC & City LGBTQ+ Staff Network Joint Event

Thursday 5th May 4pm
ELGO3, Drysdale Building, City University/Online Livestream

The screening will be followed by a discussion led by Raf Benato (Health Sciences)
About the Documentary:
REBEL DYKES is a full-length documentary about the explosion that happened when punk met feminism, told through the lives of a gang of lesbians in the riotous London of the 1980s. It follows a close-knit group of friends who met at the Greenham Common peace camp and later became artists, performers, music-makers and activists in London, eventually laying the groundwork for today’s LGBTIQ community with their sex-positive rebellion.

More details and registration here.

New Directions in Feminism and Media

PhD & ECR Conference, Monday 9th & Tuesday 10th May 2022, online
Day 1: 2.30pm-6.30pm GMT (UK) / 9:30am-1.30pm EST (US) / 6:30am-10.30am PDT
Day 2: 2.30pm-6pm GMT (UK) / 9:30am-1pm EST (US) / 6:30am-10am PDT. Including online drinks

This event is the third iteration of the New Directions in Feminist Thought conference which took place in January 2022, and November 2020. The event organised on a consortium basis by City, University of London, Coventry, LSE and Annenberg (UPenn & USC) will consist of several panel sessions scheduled across 2 days. Each panel with have 4/5 presentations lasting 10 minutes with time for questions on a range of topics from contemporary feminist research.

The event is to be a work-in-progress showcase for doctoral and recent post-doctoral students with the aim of creating lively debate amongst the community of feminist cultural studies, media studies and sociology scholars across our institutions, and to encourage inter-university debate and collaboration. Participants from all areas of research within the field of feminist and gender studies will present work on a range of subjects connected to gender and research in times of crisis and change. Panels include: Popular Feminist Media and Sexual Violence; Feminist Icons and Media; Athletic culture and Feminism; Feminism and Media/Creative Industries; TikTok and Feminism; Feminism and Technology; Home, Family, Feminism; and Poetry, Portraiture, Plays.

PhD students from any institution are very welcome to attend (NB the deadline for speakers has now passed). To register, email gsrc@city.ac.uk

Feminist research approaches: methods in practice

Wednesday 6th April 4-5.30pm
A ‘PhD centered’ event aiming to offer a space to share experiences/resources around feminist methods & methodologies.

Reflecting on the critical intervention of researchers and feminist activists, this event brings together five City, University of London PhD students across from the fields of sociology, media and cultural studies, and international politics to discuss how feminist methodologies inform their approaches and fieldwork. Fostering a platform for debate and exchange of ideas, this event invites the wider community of students and ECRs to discuss the challenges of researching gender and sexuality in the 21st century. Speakers include: Timo Koch, Xintong Jia, Clare Bowen, Peggy Nakou, and Hannah Curran-Troop.

More details and registration here

Book launch: Confidence Culture

Wednesday 23 March 2022, 6.00-7.30pm, LSE Media + Communications & GSRC event

Speakers: Professor Shani Orgad, Professor Rosalind Gill.
Discussants: Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola and Dr Katherine Angel.
Chair: Dr Rachel O’Neill
To celebrate the publication of their new book Confidence Culture (Duke University Press, 2022), Professor Shani Orgad and Professor Rosalind Gill discus how imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks hold women back rather than entrenched social injustices. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of colour, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative.

Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola and Dr Katherine Angel respond to the argument of Confidence Culture, in connection to their own work on gender, violence and desire.

More details and sign up here.

The Politics of Motherhood
Wednesday 23rd February 4-5.15pm
Speakers: Dr Pragya Agarwal (Loughborough) and Dr Maud Perrier Bristol
Respondent: Professor Lynne Segal (Birkbeck/City)
Chair: Jo Littler City, University of London
In this session, Pragya Agarwal and Maud Perrier introduce their respective new books, (M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman and Childcare Struggles, Maternal Workers and Social Reproduction, both of which are concerned with the complex lived realities, challenges and political climate of motherhood today.

More details and sign up here.

New Directions in Feminist Thought PhD & ECR Conference
Wednesday 26th & Thursday 27th Jan 2022, online
Day 1: 2.15pm-6.30pm GMT (UK) / 9:15am-1.30pm EST (US) / 6:15am-10.30am PDT Includes keynote panel discussion with Dr Chantelle Lewis (Oxford) Dr Julia Ticona (Annenberg) and Dr Melanie Kennedy (Leicester).

Day 2: 2.15pm-6pm GMT (UK) / 9:15am-1pm EST (US) / 6:15am-10am PDT. Including online drinks
Building on a successful event last year, this day event organised on a consortium basis by City, University of London, Coventry, LSE and Annenberg (UPenn & USC) will consist of several panel sessions scheduled across 2 days. Each panel with have 4/5 presentations lasting 10 minutes with time for questions on a range of topics from contemporary feminist research.
More details & event registration here.

GSRC Online Writing Retreats

20th & 21st January, all 9:30-2pm and led by City Staff members
To register, email gsrc@city.ac.uk

Events in 2020/2021

GSRC Online Writing Retreats
4th & 5th October
11th & 12th November
6th & 7th December, all 9:30-2pm and led by City Staff members
To register, email gsrc@city.ac.uk

Monday 25th October 9am-1pm Feminism in Spain: Challenges and debates today (Feminismo en España: Retos y debates actuales)
A half-day online conference exploring key challenges for and debates within feminism in contemporary Spain. Speakers include Ana de Miguel, Beatriz Ranea-Triviño, Emma Gómez Nicolau, María José Gámez Fuentes, Sonia Núñez Puente and Diana Fernández Romero, speaking on topics including The Feminist Movement in Contemporary Spain, Youth and Gender, and Media and Violence. More details and sign-up here.

Friday 15th October 2-4pm Feminist Collaging Workshop with Asma Istwani
Collage, paint and mixed-media artist, Asma Istwani will lead an online 2-hour collaging workshop. In this workshop, attendees will learn about different types of collage, be guided through tips and techniques, as well as participate in discussions of how it can be used to express ideas about gender. Limited places, to register, email gsrc@city.ac.uk

GSRC Research-in-progress seminars

Wednesday 1 December, 1-2pm, Feminist critique to digital consent . Dr Elinor Carmi (Sociology). A joint GSRC & Sociology seminar. More details & registration here.

Thursday 4th November 1-2pm, Dr Arienne Yong A gendered EU Settlement Scheme: women as vulnerable in a post-Brexit Britain, Chair: Hannah Manzur. Joint GSRC and CLS seminar

Wednesday 13th October 1-2pm, Dr Sarah Burton, Leverhulme Fellow, Sociology, Writing with the canon: locating gender and sexuality in our everyday canonical engagements. Chair: Professor Simon Susen

Wednesday 6th October 12-1pm, Cassandra Yuill (Health Sciences), A critical feminist discourse analysis of induction of labour policy and guidance Chair: Christine McCourt (Health)

GSRC Online Writing Retreat with Professor Pat Thomson – 5th-7th July – more details and sign up here.

GSRC Pride Event

Wednesday June 20th 4-5pm Revisiting the Politics of Pride in a Post-Covid world? Queer Liberation, (de-)commercialisation, and re-claiming public space

Dr Francesca Romana Ammaturo (Roehampton), Dr Olimpia Burchiellaro (Westminster), Dr Koen Slootmaeckers (City)
More details and sign up here.

GSRC Research Seminar

Monday 14th June 4-5.30pm Is the British Armed Services having a #MeToo moment? with Dr Julie Wheelwright
More details and sign up here.

GSRC series – Advanced feminist research methods and skills series

Thursday 29 April, 11-2pm, Gender and quantitative methodologies

11-12pm Dr Rachel Cohen ‘What might a critical feminist engagement with quantitative methods involve?

1-2pm European Social Survey staff, ‘Using ESS for research on gender and sexuality’

How might we use quantitative methods in gender research? How might the European Social Survey (ESS) be used for research into gender and sexuality? Find out at these two talks (with Q&A).

All welcome. Register
here.

Dr Rachel Cohen is Reader in Sociology and has written on statistical literacy, gender and employment. She was founding co-ordinator of City Q-Step Centre.

Eric Harrison, Stefan Swift, Eva Aizpurua, Elissa Sibley and Jennifer McGuiness all work at ESS headquarters at City.

Thursday 20 May, 1pm – 2:30pm, Text-in-action: a research workshop with Professor Helen Wood (Lancaster)

‘Text in action’ is an audience research methodology pioneered by Helen Wood in her work on television reception to interrogate dynamic relationships between texts and social contexts. In this workshop, Helen Wood will discuss text-in-action research: explain how it evolved, how it works, its problems and possibilities. The workshop will include time for questions and discussion.

Booking essential. Priority given to PhDs and ECRs. More details and registration here.

Monday 22 March 4pm-5.15pm. Voice and Voices: Feminist interviews and the ‘Sisterhood and After’ project
Professor Margaretta Jolly (Sussex) & Dr Polly Russell (British Library)

In this seminar, Margaretta Jolly and Polly Russell will reflect on their work using oral histories of the Women’s Liberation Movement and the different ways they have put them to use. They discuss the Sisterhood and After project, its conception and methods. Margaretta Jolly discusses her interpretation of these oral histories in her book Sisterhood and After. Polly Russell will talk about the use voices and interviews on the British Library website and the Unfinished Business exhibition. Together they will reflect on the use of oral histories as feminist method.
More details and registration here.

Tuesday 25th May 12-1pm Writing with the canon: locating gender and sexuality in our everyday canonical engagements. Dr Sarah Burton
Register here.
My monograph-in-progress, Writing with the Canon: Reflections on Intellectuals, Power and the Making of Knowledge, examines the ways the canon and its values are sedimented in daily academic life and value judgements, conceptions of the self as an intellectual, or expert, and institutional inequalities of racism, sexism, and classism. Rather than positioning the canon as stable, fixed, or knowable Writing with the Canon suggests an interpretation of the canon-as-object wherein it is lively, animated, and vital. Beginning by acknowledging perspectives of the canon as ‘male, pale, and stale’, the book looks to move away from these conventional analyses to provide richly detailed ethnographic testimony on the affect, influence, and power the canon in the everyday writing lives of contemporary intellectuals. In this work-in-progress seminar I hope to do two things: i) to share the ethnography underpinning the book and discuss these ideas of ‘sticky’ or ‘lively’ canons in our new context of post/pandemic intellectual life; ii) to dig deeper into the more subtle appearances of issues of gender and sexuality in the canon – movements and machinations that go beyond the notion that the canon is simply a collection of dead white men. Here I hope to examine the more complicated and often-fleeting ways that the canon is gendered, queered, or intersects unexpectedly with power and privilege connected to gender and sexuality.

Wednesday 24th March 1pm-2pm GSRC & Sociology seminar: The police response to domestic abuse during – and after – Covid-19 . Dr Katrin Hohl (City) and Dr Kelly Johnson (Durham)
This webinar presents preliminary findings from an ongoing ESRC-funded research project on domestic abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic as it comes to police attention, and police officers perspectives on the challenges of responding to domestic abuse during the pandemic.

More details and sign up here.

Friday 12th February 11am-12pm
GSRC Research-in-progress seminar: COVID-19 Highlighting Inequalities in Access to Health in England: A Case Study of Ethnic Minority and Migrant Women. Dr Sabrina Germain and Dr Adrienne Yong, City Law School
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified existing barriers to healthcare in England for ethnic minority and migrant women. We expose how the pandemic has affected the allocation of healthcare resources leading to the prioritisation of COVID-19 patients and suspending the equal access to healthcare services approach. We argue that we must look beyond this disruption in provision by examining existing barriers to access that have been amplified by the pandemic in order to understand the poorer health outcomes for women in ethnic minority and migrant communities. Register by emailing gsrc@city.ac.uk

Monday 25th January, 11am-12.30pm, Feminist Digital Ethnography – a roundtable with Francesca Sobande, Ingrid Brudvig, and Zoë Glatt discussing the theoretical, practical, and ethical implications of conducting feminist digital ethnographic research.
Limited places, prioritising City PhDs and ECR, sign up by emailing gsrc@city.ac.uk.

Friday 15th January 10am-12pm, Difficult Conversations – A feminism and methodology workshop with Róisín Ryan-Flood (Essex). Limited places, prioritising City PhDs and ECR, sign up here

2020
Friday 18 December, 11am-12pm, Producing Feminist Research: Dilemmas of doing Feminist Ethnography and Research with our own Communities
Dr Maria do Mar Pereira (Warwick) in conversation with Dr Laura Favaro (City). Interview followed by questions and discussion with attendees. Limited places, prioritising City PhDs and ECR, sign up here here

Friday 13 November 9:30am-1pm ‘Writing Qualitative Research’ with Professor Karen O’Reilly (via Zoom)
This half-day advanced course covers the transition from interpretive thematic analysis to writing up qualitative findings.

GSRC Autumn term online research-in-progress seminars

Thurs 8 Oct, 1-2pm – Dr Vanessa Gash, ‘The partner pay gap – how normative values of male breadwinning sustain within partner pay inequalities’. In association with CROWS.
Chair: Jo Littler.

Wed 21 Oct, 1-2pm – Dr Jessica Simpson, ‘Poles apart? A comparative analysis of female university students and graduates working in the UK stripping and hospitality industries’
Chair: Rachel Cohen.

Wed 4 Nov, 1-2pm – Cassandra Wiener, ‘Domestic abuse and coercive control’. In association with the Violence and Society Centre.
Chair: Merili Pullerits.

Thurs 19 Nov, 1-2pm – Dr Hetta Howes, ‘Welling up and spilling over: gendered language of excess in medieval literature’.
Chair: Jo Littler.

Wed 25 Nov, 1-2pm – Dr Carolina Matos, ‘“Is it all about abortion?”: NGOs, advocacy communications and women’s reproductive bodies in the digital age’
Chair: Laura Favaro

Fri 4 Dec, 1-2pm – Dr Sahra Taylor, Visiting Lecturer in International, Political, and Social Theory.
Title TBC
Postponed

Wed 9th Dec, 1-2pm – Dr Laura Favaro ‘Gender wars: Interviewing feminist academics’.
Chair: Ros Gill
(postponed

10th November 10.30-4.30, Zoom Webinar, PhD Day Event: New Directions in Feminist Thought: In Times of Urgency, Anger and Activism

Organised on a consortium basis by LSE, Goldsmiths and GSRC at City, University of London, this event will comprise 4 panel sessions scheduled across the day, concluding with a plenary talk by Dr Amy Hasinoff (author of Sexting panic: Rethinking criminalization, privacy, and consent)

GSRC PhD Reading Group
A monthly reading group for City PhD’s interested in gender and/or sexuality. Please contact Hannah.Curran-Troop.2@city.ac.uk if you want to participate. All books/texts will be chosen by PhD participants

11th & 25th Nov 3-5pm online via Zoom – reading and discussing bell hooks Ain’t I a Woman

25, 9 Sept & 7th Oct 3-5pm online via Zoom – reading and discussing Alison Phipps Me not you: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

10 July & 24 July, 3-5pm online via Zoom – reading and discussing Lola Olufemi’s Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

12 June & 26 June 2-4pm, online via Zoom – reading and discussing Angela McRobbie’s Feminism and the Politics of Resilience

1 May 5-7pm, online via Zoom – reading various articles and resources relating to gender and sexuality in times of Covid-19. Please get in touch to access this reading list – gsrc@city.ac.uk or hannah.curran-troop.2@city.ac.uk

26 Feb 4-6pm, in AG05 – reading bell hooks Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations

10th November 10.30-4.30, Zoom Webinar, LSE: PhD Day Event: New Directions in Feminist Thought: In Times of Urgency, Anger and Activism

Organised on a consortium basis by LSE, Goldsmiths and GSRC at City, University of London, this event will comprise 4 panel sessions scheduled across the day, concluding with a plenary talk by Dr Amy Hasinoff (author of Sexting panic: Rethinking criminalization, privacy, and consent)

Spring term GSRC Research-in-progress seminars
* Please note due to Covid-19 all scheduled seminars after March have been postponed*
29 April, 12-1, AG22 (College) Carolina Matos “Is it all about abortion?”: NGOs, advocacy communications and women’s reproductive bodies in the digital age. Chair: Laura Favaro

21 April, 1:30-3pm, D427 (Rhind) Ginnie Braun (University of Auckland) ‘… what happens next? Story completion as a method to explore meaning-making around sex, gender and gendered bodies’ and Kellie Burns (University of Sydney) ‘Mediating Sexual Subjectivities’. Chair: Ros Gill

1 April 12-1, D111 (Rhind) Vanessa Gash, ‘The Partner Pay Gap – How normative values of male breadwinning sustain within partner pay’. Chair: Gerbrand Tholen. In conjunction with CROWS (The Centre for Research on Work and Society at City)

11 March 12-1pm, DLG08 (Rhind) Julie Wheelwright, ‘From Mata Hari to #MeToo: Reflections on Seduction, Harassment and Sexual Shame’. Chair: Jess Simpson

12 Feb 12- 1pm, D111 (Rhind) Lis Howell, ‘Expert Women’ . Chair: Suzanne Franks

5 Feb 2-3pm, D104 (Rhind) Peter Grant (CASS), ‘Confrontation vs Subversion: Fourth Wave Feminism and the work of Amanda Palmer and Annie Clark’. Chair: Or Rosenboim. This talk is in conjunction with the Centre for Modern History at City

22nd Jan 12-1pm, D111 (Rhind) Carolina Are,‘The Law of Meta-Shade in Crossover Facebook Group Fire WERK With Me’ and Michael Hunklinger, ‘Claiming public space – Queer-political graffiti in Vienna’. Chair: Koen Slootmaeckers

LGBT History month film screenings. Organised by the LGBTQI+ staff network at City in association with GRSC
8 Feb, 6pm in ELG02 But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) & discussion with staff from the LGBTQI+ Staff Network
11 Feb, 6pm in C308 Moonlight (2016) & by Q&A with Dr Clive Nwonka, LSE Fellow in Film
19 Feb, 6pm in C300 Lasting Marks (2018) & by Q&A with director, Charlie Shackleton
28 Feb, 5.30pm in A130 A Fantastic Woman (2017) & discussion

Events in 2019

5 December, 6-8pm, C309 Book launch: Work that Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture, Jamie Hakim (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)
A joint event with UEA School of Art, Media and American Studies.

22 November, 2pm-6.30pm, AG09, New Research in Gender and Music
A joint symposium presented by the Centre for Gender and Sexualities Research and the Music Department at City

13 November 1-2pm, C307 – GSRC Research-in-progress seminar
An informal research-in-progress seminar. Prof Rosalind Gill (Sociology) and Dr Koen Slootmaeckers (Politics) will both be discussing their current research

16 October, 1:30 – 6:30pm: Feminist dilemmas, feminist hope? 30 years of the Feminist and Women Studies Association and launch of the GSRC at City, University of London.
Speakers include: Heidi Safia Mirza, Jo Grady, Francesca Sobande, Lynne Segal, Sylvia Walby, Lola Olufemi, Rosalind Gill, Jess Butler, the Res-Sisters, Rights of Women and, the Women’s Budget Group.

4 October 4-6:30pm: Research symposium on Sex Robots
Dr Kate Devlin (author of Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots),), Dr Rebecca Saunders (author of Bodies of Work: The Labour of Sex in the Digital Age) and Dr Belinda Middleweek (author of Real Sex Films: The New Intimacy and Risk in Cinema) discussing the impact of sex robots on our most intimate sphere – the realm of sex, love and intimacy.