Our co-director, Professor Kate Fisher, and Engaged Research Fellow, Dr Jen Grove, work with Professor Rebecca Langlands (University of Exeter) on the Sex and History project. This award-winning initiative works in collaboration with museums, schools, youth groups and sexual health charities, using objects from past cultures to empower people to discuss sexuality more easily.

This approach draws upon and speaks to our research on the early sexual scientists, whose understanding of sexuality and gender was informed, not only by their medical backgrounds, but by artistic, cultural and historical materials and evidence, including historical artefacts. In this way the Sex and History project answers calls in the UK and worldwide for young people’s sex education to address non-biological aspects of healthy sexual development, such as relationships, consent and self-esteem.

See more on the Sex and History project here.

Our project co-director Dr Jana Funke worked with a group of young trans* people aged 13-19 from Gendered Intelligence and artist Jason Barker to create the comic Transvengers.

This project responded to some of the themes and personalities in the Institute of Sexology exhibition at Wellcome Collection, informed by their own experiences as young trans people. The aim was to create a lighted hearted response to some really complicated ideas, in a way that everyone can understand and enjoy.

Each person designed their own Transvengers character who travels back in time to challenge key sexologists and their ideas – many of which continue to shape society’s thinking about sex and gender today.

You can view the comic online here.

Transvengers is a Wellcome Collection Youth Programme project.

* Someone who (at least partially) disagrees with the gender they were assigned at birth.

In summer 2015 Dr Jana Funke, our co-director, took part in a discussion at the Southbank, London with four acclaimed writers – Malika Booker, Kei Miller, Warsan Shire and Rachel Mars – about how to make sense of sex.

The writers presented work which illustrates how radically different sex is for different people and invites us to consider sexuality from different perspectives, sometimes confronting cultural and religious taboos.

Jana discussed how literature contributes to our understanding of sexuality alongside scientific and medical research. The early pioneers of sexology research reached out beyond medical disciplines to understand our sexuality and in turn literary writers used ideas from science and medicine. She argued that this multi-disciplinary approach is important for contemporary research. Alongside brain scans, measuring hormone levels and genetics, literature helps us understand other dimensions of sex, the psychological, the social and the emotional.

Listen a podcast recording of the event here.

Read the full programme of the event here. 

This was part of the Sexology Season at Wellcome Collection.

In 2015, as part of the Institute of Sexology exhibition, our co-director Professor Kate Fisher joined a panel discussion on sexual desire.

This discussion considered the way in which, from asexuality to sex addiction, there is huge variety in our experience of sexual desire. Both the temptation and the conflict it can create are enduring themes central to Western literature, yet sexual attraction has been little researched until recent decades. The panel suggested we are still largely in the dark about many facets of attraction, so having little or excessive desire can be difficult experiences.

Read the full symposium programme here.

Our co-director Dr Jana Funke took part in the Wellcome Collection Sexology Season, Manchester, March 2015. These events were designed to coincide with The Institute of Sexology exhibition.

Jana joined Dr Helen Mathers (Open University) to talk about some of the issues raised by the work of the early sexual scientists featured in the exhibition, in particular 19th century prostitution, the definitions of sex work and the ‘victim narrative’.

Listen to the podcast of the event here.

Listen to more podcasts from The Sexology Season featuring discussions with sexual health professionals, researchers, artists, psychologists, sex workers, sex therapists and interesting questions and observations from audiences.

In 2015 our co-director Dr Jana Funke ran a series of workshops in The Institute of Sexology galleries at the Wellcome Collection. She examined photographs from late 19th and early 20th century sexual science publications to explore how these sex researchers used and interpreted photographic evidence. What role did such photographs play in allowing individuals to explore their own gender identity and sexuality? Read Jana’s write-up blog of the event.

After the event, visitors had the option to have their picture taken by photographic artist Bret Syfert. Bret turned the shots into gender blurring portraits. See the results and read Bret’s write-up blog of the event.