Jenny Lawson

My research focuses on food, gender, and contemporary culture, bringing together feminist theory, food studies, cultural theory, ethnography, and practice-led methodologies. Situated within contemporary performance practice and live art, I explore how food shapes and reflects cultural identities, with particular expertise in durational, installation, site-specific, participatory, and sensory performance.

A central strand of my research examines the relationship between women and food in popular culture, with a particular interest in the cultural figure of the domestic goddess and its influence on contemporary constructions of femininity. Drawing on feminist theory and performance studies, I investigate how culinary practices, domestic labour, and food media contribute to the production, regulation, and performance of gendered identities.

I have published extensively on the construction and representation of culinary and domestic identities in performance practice and media culture, with a particular focus on live artists such as Bobby Baker, Hunt & Darton, Catherine Bell, Travis Alabanza, Lauren Barri Holstein and Katy Baird; and celebrity cooks Nigella Lawson and Jack Monroe. My monograph, Performance, Women and Food: The Tyranny of the Domestic Goddess (Palgrave Macmillan), forthcoming in 2026, offers the first sustained examination of the domestic goddess as a performative and cultural construct.

My work develops new feminist and performance-based frameworks for understanding food as a cultural and performative practice. Through critical and interventionist approaches, I explore how performance can challenge dominant narratives of gender, domesticity, and consumption, creating space for alternative expressions of contemporary femininity.