Community engagement is a key element of our work in Gender Studies. Faculty and students collaborate with community groups, non-governmental organisations and charities, schools and policymakers and this is central to much of our research.
Working on topics such as hate crime, ‘lad cultures’, abortion access and equity issues for internationally mobile academics, we try to make a difference through our research and pass this commitment on to our students. Our students are often active in the community, working with local organisations and grassroots social and political groups such as the LGBT Switchboard and Brighton Feminist Collective.
In particular, the Centre has close relationships with its four associate member organisations Galop, Rise (formerly the Women’s Refuge Project), the Sex Worker Open University and Survivors’ Network, which feed into our research strategy. There are also opportunities for our postgraduate students to work collaboratively with these organisations through their dissertations.
In 2015, two Centre colleagues were honoured with a Sussex Research Impact Award and an Emerging Researcher commendation, which was a wonderful recognition of our commitment in this area. In particular, our work on 'lad cultures' and sexual violence in higher education has been widely covered in the media and inspired a number of initiatives - this was the subject of an Impact Case Study for REF 2014.