My name is Catherine and I am doing a PhD in Gender Studies at the University of Hull, looking at the relationship between love and sexuality.

 

Within the various discourses about the construction of sexualities, love seems to be remarkably absent. My work seeks to explore this relative absence, and to ask what the relationship might be, and how love might influence the construction, development and understanding of sexual orientation, desire, practice and identity. I believe that many individuals feel that love has something to do with sexuality. I am interested to hear peoples' thoughts on the relationship between love and sexuality (or the lack of any relationship between them!). I want to explore what this relationship might be; to look at individuals' stories, experiences and views of the relationship between love and sexuality, what kind of influences they might have over each other, how they might change over time, and how exploring these might help us to understand more about people’s sexual selves and relationships. 

The project is supervised and has been cleared by the University's Ethics Committee, and is supervised by Dr Mark Johnson and Dr Rachel Alsop at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hull.

 

I am currently recruiting participants for the project, and there are various ways in which you can participate:

* Participate in a one-to-one interview

* Participate in a focus group

*Joining the 'Core Group' who will meet five times over the course of the academic year 2013-14

 

More details about all of these is available on the Participate page.

 

Who can participate?

* I am looking for people who would like to talk to me about their views and experiences of love and sexuality.

 

* I am particularly interested in talking to people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or polyamorous, but am also interested to talk to people who are heterosexual or who identify/practice other sexualities.

 

*Or... People whose sexual desire, practice or identity doesn't fit neatly into any of these descriptions!

 

* I want to talk to men and to women and to people who do not identify with either of these gender categories

 

* I want to talk to people who are over 18 years old. There is no upper age limit.

 

If you feel that your story fits into any of these categories then I would love to hear from you. I am based just outside Hull, but am able to travel reasonable distances in order to conduct interviews, or to look at creative ways to enable participation, like Skype.
 

 

About me:

I am Catherine, nearly 40, a single mother of two young boys and passionately interested in love and sexuality! I am an experienced researcher and most recently undertook research for my MSc (applied social research) dissertation in 2012 on the narratives of people who have experienced fluidity or changes in their sexuality in adulthood.

 

 

Tell me more...

 

To find out more, take a look at the Participate page, where you can find information about the different ways of participating in the project. The Love Blog! is a place where I will post interesting articles, images, poems, songs and other bits and pieces that people might be interested in - please feel free to send things to me if you think they should be posted on the blog! If you are a Facebook user, you might like to pop over to the project's Facebook page where you can get involved in discussions based on the posts I make on the blog too. And finally, if you have any questions or want to sign up, please use the Contact form and I will get back to you as soon as I can.