Gender and Sexuality Studies provides an analytical approach to the significance of sex, gender and sexuality in many parts of our lives and the important roles they often play in how we understand ourselves and the structures we live in.

Gender and Sexuality Studies provides a critical lens across a range of fields, including:

  • art and literature;
  • popular culture and the media;
  • politics and the law;
  • marketing and advertising;
  • health and wellbeing;
  • the economics of family life and work.

Whether in our public identities or intimate lives, sex, gender and sexuality are prominent features of contemporary and historical life.

Gender and Sexuality Studies at Deakin provides a structured interdisciplinary programme for studying sex, gender and sexuality, drawing on local knowledges and histories, while also situating these ideas in their global context. 

Through an integrated study of local experiences and transnational flows of knowledge and influences, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Deakin provides students with an understanding of key forces which shape our understandings and lived experiences of gender and sexuality, both as cultural phenomena and as embodied practices.  

In particular, the programme emphasises the intersectional dimensions of gender and sexuality, addressing questions of class, citizenship, ethnicity, race, religion, ability and geographical location.  Throughout their studies, students are encouraged to develop skills to analytically reflect on, and contribute to, a range of important debates. 

These include discussions about how sex, gender and sexuality inform understandings of the self, and how we recognise and respond to difference.