Cultural and Museum Studies, University of Birmingham
Thesis title:
Asexuality – referring to people who experience little-to-no sexual attraction is often considered to be the ‘invisible orientation’ for its lack of visibility in society. Similarly, asexuality has been invisible within the media, although in recent years a handful of asexual representations on British television have appeared. These representations often stereotype and misrepresent asexuality, typically offering asexual narratives limited screen time, and restricting asexual characters to young, white, cisgender people who are interested in romance, and ignoring other asexual possibilities. Nonetheless, these representations are meaningful to audiences watching them, be it non-asexual audiences who may be learning about asexuality for the first time, or asexuals seeing themselves represented on screen.
Representations of minority groups have always been important, and the impact these representations have on the communities they are representing is even more so, shaping both how a minority group views themselves, as well as how others view them. However, whilst audience research has been conducted within the queer community, asexual audiences again have remained almost invisible. My research, therefore, proposes to be the first empirical study of asexual audience perspectives regarding asexual representations through exploratory mixed methods research (questionnaires and interviews).
Through this research, I aim to explore how asexual representations have impacted asexual communities by analysing asexual representations and experiences and offering a voice to an underrepresented community – a community that I identify within.
Reshaping Kinship and Families Workshop (University of Birmingham) - 10-minute paper presentation: '(Im)possibilities of Asexual Kinship on British Television'
ROLES XII Sexuality and Gender Studies Conference 2024 – Co-convenor.
British Association of Film, Television, and Screen Studies Conference 2024 – Poster Presentation: 'Televising Asexuality: Misrepresentations and Stereotypes'.
The Arts Matters (University of Birmingham) – PechaKucha Presentation: 'Televising Asexuality: QUestioning the Impact(s) of Asexual Representations on Asexual Communities.
National Student Pride 2024 – Winner of the Researching the Rainbow panel for presentation: 'Asexual Representations and their Impacts'. Also, top three finalist for the Academic Contribution of the Year Award.
Postgraduate Research Festival (University of Birmingham) 2023 – Awarded 'Best Research Poster in the College of Arts and Law' for 'Televising Asexuality: Misrepresentations and Stereotypes'.
ROLES XII Sexuality and Gender Studies Conference 2023 – 15-minute paper presentation: '"Sex just doesn't do it for some people": A Critical Analysis of Representations of Asexualities in Netflix's Sex Education (2019)'.
UK Asexuality Conference 2022 – 15-minute paper presentation: 'A (Brief) History of Fictional Representations of Asexuality on British Television'.
ROLES XI Sexuality and Gender Studies Conference 2022 – 15-minute paper presentation: 'Retracing Asexuality on British Television'.
Postgraduate Research Festival (University of Birmingham) 2022 – Research poster: 'Searching for Asexuality on British TV' – Finalist. Images of Research: 'Searching for Asexuality on British Television' - Shortlisted.
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