Sex and sexualities are ubiquitous presences in contemporary media cultures and public discourse, from health panics surrounding the effects of easily-accessible online pornography, to ongoing (and age-old) moral panics about "good" sex and "bad" sex, fears of "sexualisation", or the growing market for all kinds of sex technologies: porn, sex toys, sexual performance drugs (Viagra, Cialis, etcetera), recreational drugs (GHB, crystal methamphetamine, cathinones, etcetera), online sex work (OnlyFans, JustForFans), dating and hook-up apps (Grindr, Tinder, Recon, Hinge, Scruff, etcetera).
In my research, I approach sex cultures as pillars of modern and contemporary forms of subjectivation, centring the role and affordances of different media in producing, disseminating, and sustaining different sex cultures and sexual subjects. I am particularly interested in queer sex media and sex cultures: from the ways in which sex and pornography have informed queer people's ways of understanding themselves and relating to one another—operating as one of many sources for a sexual pedagogy of the queer self—to modern and contemporary forms of queer sociability centred around sex and sexual experiments with the body's affects, pleasures, and desires. A core preoccupation of mine is the roles that both queer sex media and sex cultures have historically had (and continue to have) as mediators of broader ideas about ethics, kinship, belonging and politics that sometimes resonate with, sometimes diverge from, institutionalised hegemonic framings of intimacy and relations of self and other.
These research interests have led me to research and write on topics such as gay porn; cruising, public sex, and the public/private divide; queer club cultures; queer cultures of drug use; HIV and AIDS cultures; barebacking, fluid exchanges and the production of the body in contemporary gay "pig" sexual subcultures; the cultural dimensions of narratives of infection and immunity (e.g. relating to HIV or COVID-19); histories of homosexuality in relation to forms of citizenship (including sexual citizenship) idealised by contemporary nation-states; etc.
Despite being focused on what may be perceived as a wide diversity of topics, all my work nonetheless reflects my interest in the ways in which modern and contemporary queer bodies (like all bodies) can only ever be grasped from within the wider assemblages of flesh, technologies, institutions, medical and legal discourse, consumption rituals, sexual practices, cultural formations and media infrastructures of which they are always part and through which they necessarily constitute themselves, however provisionally.
In my research, I approach sex cultures as pillars of modern and contemporary forms of subjectivation, centring the role and affordances of different media in producing, disseminating, and sustaining different sex cultures and sexual subjects. I am particularly interested in queer sex media and sex cultures: from the ways in which sex and pornography have informed queer people's ways of understanding themselves and relating to one another—operating as one of many sources for a sexual pedagogy of the queer self—to modern and contemporary forms of queer sociability centred around sex and sexual experiments with the body's affects, pleasures, and desires. A core preoccupation of mine is the roles that both queer sex media and sex cultures have historically had (and continue to have) as mediators of broader ideas about ethics, kinship, belonging and politics that sometimes resonate with, sometimes diverge from, institutionalised hegemonic framings of intimacy and relations of self and other.
These research interests have led me to research and write on topics such as gay porn; cruising, public sex, and the public/private divide; queer club cultures; queer cultures of drug use; HIV and AIDS cultures; barebacking, fluid exchanges and the production of the body in contemporary gay "pig" sexual subcultures; the cultural dimensions of narratives of infection and immunity (e.g. relating to HIV or COVID-19); histories of homosexuality in relation to forms of citizenship (including sexual citizenship) idealised by contemporary nation-states; etc.
Despite being focused on what may be perceived as a wide diversity of topics, all my work nonetheless reflects my interest in the ways in which modern and contemporary queer bodies (like all bodies) can only ever be grasped from within the wider assemblages of flesh, technologies, institutions, medical and legal discourse, consumption rituals, sexual practices, cultural formations and media infrastructures of which they are always part and through which they necessarily constitute themselves, however provisionally.
