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Victoria Robinson
Emeritus Professor

Biography

BA Modern English Studies (Middlesex Polytechnic), MA Women’s Studies (Sheffield Hallam Polytechnic), PGCE (University of Roehampton), PhD Sociology (University of Manchester).

In 1984, whilst a student on the MA Women’s Studies at Sheffield Hallam University (the second such programme in the UK, after the University of Kent), I approached what was then the Adult Continuing Education Department at the University of Sheffield, offering classes in Women’s Studies, to which the response was that such a class would not be viable in attracting students. I returned in 1985 and persuaded the University to put on just one course, to which around 60 students came, on the first night. My own institutional and theoretical history, then and now, coincided with what can only be termed one of the most radical epistemological and methodological transformations of academia nationally and internationally, not least because of Women’s Studies’ activist roots, and the subsequent developments of Gender and Masculinity Studies.

In the early 1990’s, I was responsible for setting up one of the first degrees in Women’s Studies in the UK, at the University of Sheffield. In 1999, I moved to the University of Manchester, where I was Lecturer in Sociology/Director of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies till 2002, then became Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Newcastle, and after that, returned in 2004 to the University of Sheffield eventually becoming Reader and Director of the Centre for Gender Research, which I co-founded. I was appointed as Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York, from 2016-2021. My PhD, awarded by the Department of Sociology, University of Manchester and entitled: ‘Everyday Heterosexualities and Everyday Masculinities’, informed much of my research interests over time. Fundamental to all my research is a critical engagement with feminist theory and method underpinned by a way of working with staff and students which is both feminist and collaborative.

Contact details

Professor Victoria Robinson
Emeritus Professor
Centre for Women's Studies
University of York