Chris Waugh

I completed my BA in English at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, in 2012. After spending a year as an executive officer at the Students’ Union, I completed my MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, in 2014. Between 2014 and 2019, I worked in widening participation, development research consultancy, debt advice, mental health support, and for a major children’s charity. I completed my PhD on masculinity, affect, and anti-sexism in the British left in 2023, supervised by Dr Kevin Gillan and Dr Gemma Edwards at the University of Manchester.

My current research interests are: gender studies, zemiology, social movement studies, and gender violence prevention. More specifically, I am interested in men and masculinities (particularly within social movements of the radical left and right), the intersections between masculinities and emotions/affects; engaging men and boys in ending gender-based violence; sex work and sex workers’ rights in the United Kingdom (with a particular focus on the policing of sex workers, and on decriminalisation); gender violence prevention in housing (with a particular focus on gender and sexual violence against tenants by landlords); the sociology of video games (primarily how games depict gender, sexuality, and trauma); the theoretical work of Raymond Williams; and the sociology of extreme metal (with a particular focus on gender, affect and politics in Black Metal, especially “Red and Anarchist Black Metal” (RABM)). My research has been published in Keywords: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, Emotions and Society, and on The Conversation.

I am a member of the Contemporary Intimacies, Sexualities and Genders research group at MMU and a founding member of the GUIDE, a European network of researchers exploring “anti-gender” movements in the Global North. In 2024, I joined the editorial board of “Gender(ed) Thoughts”, a working paper series aimed at early-career researchers in gender studies. Additionally, I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the British Sociological Association and the British Society of Criminology.

I teach level 4, 5, and 6 units in Sociology and Criminology at MMU and act as a Personal Tutor. Previously, I taught at the University of Manchester (BA Sociology; BA Criminology; BA Social Sciences), the University of Leeds (BA Sociology & Social Policy; BA Politics), and the University of Law (BA Criminology; LLB Law with Criminology).

Outside academia, I am interested in stand-up comedy, creative writing, weightlifting, tabletop gaming, and grassroots activism.