Peggy Lockwood-Lord
PhD Student

After completing my undergraduate degree in Sociology with Criminology (at York), and a few eclectic job roles (in bars, a solicitor's firm, and a goat farm), I moved to Manchester. Through introductions by mutual friends - I began my involvement with the local drag community. Always interested in cultural transgressions, I took this opportunity to start my PhD in the ethnographic study of this contemporary queer counterculture. I also have an interest in body horror, the 'carnivalesque', and the 'grotesque', and their influence and applications to sexuality, 'folk' culture, and collective identity.

The title of my research is: ‘Transgressive Genders: Non-representational explorations of countercultural extremity’. 

Using longitudinal / qualitative case studies of a number of key figures in the Manchester drag community, I will challenge the idea that transgression has lost its power and become commercialised under the pressure of late modernity & accelerated capitalism. I will aim to illustrate the ongoing countercultural resistance generated within queer communities, and how this illuminates people’s collective power in their ability to respond to the government of bodies - which continues to mediate our experiences of corporeal embodiment to this day.