NORMA

  • ‘Father of four, husband, triathlete’ – assembling the male cosmetic surgeon in micro cultures of aesthetic health on Instagram
    NORMA10 April 2025By Signe Rom Rasmussen Department of Culture and Language, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, DenmarkSigne Rom Rasmussen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Culture and Language at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research focuses on health, gender, and norms, particularly in relation to medicalization and consumer culture. In her dissertation, she investigates the growing market for men's cosmetic body work, alongside changing ideals of masculinity. Her work is situated within the fields of critical studies on men and masculinities, cultural studies, and feminist posthumanities.
  • Daddy issue
    NORMA08 April 2025By Katarzyna Wojnicka University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Selling manhood online. Cultural imaginaries of testosterone in the marketing of the nutritional supplement T8
    NORMA28 March 2025By Tobias Raun Signe Rom Rasmussen a Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmarkb Department of Culture and Language, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, DenmarkTobias Raun is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University, Denmark. His widely published work is situated within the areas of media and gender studies, most recently focusing on contemporary reconfigurations of masculinity. His recent publications include research on male self-tracking related to hair and beard growth, focusing on the use of various pharmaceuticals (in collaboration with Nebeling Petersen, 2021 and 2022). He has also published a book on transgender video-blogging on YouTube (Routledge 2016) and co-edited a book on mediated intimacies (Routledge 2018).Signe Rom Rasmussen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Culture and Language at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research is situated within the fields of cultural studies, critical studies on men and masculinities, and feminist posthumanities. She works with questions concerning health, gender, and norms in relation to medicalization and consumer culture.
  • Political masculinities: crisis, governance, and leadership in Imran Khan’s UNGA speeches
    NORMA18 March 2025By Rauha Salam-Salmaoui Shazrah Salam a Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finlandb Department of English, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, PakistanRauha Salam-Salmaoui completed her PhD in English Linguistics from University of Jyväskylä, Finland. In her doctoral dissertation ‘Constructing Gender Identities Multimodally: Young, middle-class Pakistanis on Facebook’ she explored how young middle-class Pakistani men and women mobilize visual and linguistic resources in constructing their gender identities in their Facebook posts. Her research interests include construction of gender identities in social and mainstream media, Multimodal Discourse Analysis and feminism. She also holds a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics, where she developed a keen interest in language issues in Pakistan. Her work engages with notions of decolonization, examining the colonial legacies embedded in language policies and practices within Pakistan and beyond. Through her research, she aims to challenge dominant narratives and advocate for inclusivity, equity, and the reclamation of linguistic and cultural identities.Shazrah Salam did her PhD in English literature from Massey University, New Zealand. Her doctoral dissertation ‘Imposed Silences, Subversive Voices: (Re)Reading Selected Pakistani Anglophone Writing through the Bodies of Pakistani-Muslim Women’ analyzed the inscription and framing of Pakistani-Muslim women in selected Anglophone Pakistani fiction. She is a tenured lecturer in Department of English at Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan. Her areas of interest include Pakistani English fiction, postcolonial feminism, and fictional representations of the female body.
  • Implementing a Men’s Shed community program to break older men’s social isolation in rural areas: what potential for gender-transformativity
    NORMA25 February 2025By Philippe Roy Dominic Bizot Sophie Parent France Jodoin Isabelle Bombardier a School of Social Work, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canadab Social Work Teaching Unit, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, Canadac School of Social Work and Criminology, Université Laval, Québec, Canadad Centre d’action bénévole de Nicolet, Nicolet, CanadaPhilippe Roy, Ph.D is professor at the School of Social Work, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. He has a multidisciplinary background in psychology, sociology and social work. His research interests encompass gender equality, masculinities, suicide, violence prevention and mental health promotion.Dominic Bizot, Ph.D is professor and director at the Social Work Teaching Unit, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada. He has an extensive research and collaboration experience with community services for men in rural areas.Sophie Parent, Ph.D candidate at the School of Social Work and Criminology, Université Laval, Canada. Her research interests broadly encompass gender equality, social work with women and families, gender and relational diversity.France Jodoin, Ph.D candidate at the School of Social Work, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. She has a background in gerontology and journalism. Her research interests focus on rural gerontology, social participation and culture.Isabelle Bombardier is director of the Centre d'action bénévole de Nicolet, Canada (volunteer center). Her interests broadly encompass poverty prevention, social participation promotion and elder populations in rural areas.
  • Childless men negotiating reproductive age limits: a qualitative study from Lithuania
    NORMA24 February 2025By Lina Šumskaitė Margarita Gedvilaitė-Kordušienė Gražina Rapolienė Daumantas Stumbrys Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Institute of Sociology, Vilnius, LithuaniaLina Šumskaitė is a researcher at the Department of Demographic and Family Research (Institute of Sociology at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences) in Vilnius, Lithuania. As an associate professor in sociology, she teaches at the Social Policy Department at Vilnius University. Her doctoral thesis (2014) focused on men's fathering practices. Her research field is on men's and women's procreational intentions, experiences of not having children and qualitative research on mothering and fathering issues.Margarita Gedvilaitė-Kordušienė is a senior researcher at the Department of Demographic and Family Research (Institute of Sociology at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences) in Vilnius, Lithuania. She is an associate professor at the VilniusTech University. Margarita Gedvilaitė-Kordušienė has a PhD in sociology; her research interests are intergenerational relations, family and migration, childlessness, and loneliness.Gražina Rapolienė is a senior researcher at the Department of Demographic and Family Research (Institute of Sociology at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences) in Vilnius, Lithuania. Currently, she is the national representative and grant-awarding coordinator in the COST CA22167 action ‘Participatory Approaches with Older Adults’ (PAAR-net) Management Committee and a board member of the International Sociological Association, Research Committee of Ageing. Her doctoral dissertation on ageing identity was awarded the best social sciences and humanities dissertation in Lithuania in 2012. Her research interests are ageism, social (and digital) exclusion in later life, loneliness, childlessness, and media representation.Daumantas Stumbrys is a senior researcher at the Department of Demographic and Family Research (Institute of Sociology at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences) in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is the head of the project ‘(Not) to Become a Father: Lithuanian Men's Procreative Behaviour and Experiences of Childlessness’. Daumantas Stumbrys has a PhD in sociology; his research interests are demographic differentials, the sociology of health, and men's health.
  • After ViagraⓇ: multivalent medicalization, hybrid masculinities, and direct-to-consumer digital health
    NORMA10 February 2025By Ben Curran Wills Jeremy Gottlieb Department of Sociology and Science Studies Program, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USABen Curran Wills (he/him) is a sociology and science studies PhD student at UC San Diego. He holds an MS in History and Sociology of Technology and Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.Jeremy A. Gottlieb (they/them) is an MD-PhD student in Medical Anthropology at UCSF and UC-Berkeley. Their past research includes ethnographic investigations around pediatric transgender health and deep brain stimulation as a treatment for psychiatric illnesses.
  • Gender theory approaches to fathers’ parental leave experiences of primary childcare: a review of Nordic publications 1992–2020
    NORMA24 January 2025By Tobias K. Axelsson Centre for Feminist Social Studies, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, SwedenTobias K. Axelsson is Senior Lecturer in Social Studies, Örebro University and holds a PhD in Gender Studies. His research interests include feminist perspectives on fatherhood, gender and education, norm-critical pedagogy, and violence. He is the author of “Norm-critique as revitalizer of gender equality? Local policy actors' norm-critical understandings of Swedish preschool's gender-equality mission.” (NordSTEP, 2023) and the co-author of “Involving men: The multiple meanings of female genital mutilation in a minority migrant context” (together with Sofia Strid, NORA, 2020).
  • MEDICINE MAN. Reconfigurations of masculinity in times of increased medicalization
    NORMA12 January 2025By Karen Hvidtfeldt Michael Nebeling Petersen Signe Rom Rasmussen a University of Southern Denmark, Denmarkb University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Male celebrities, masculinities and the promotion of mental health literacy: comparing the Anglophone and Sinophone pop culture landscape
    NORMA24 December 2024By Garth Stahl Yang Zhao a School of Education, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australiab Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, EnglandDr. Garth Stahl's research interests focus on the relationship between education and society, socio-cultural studies of education, student identities, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects and publications encompass theoretical and empirical studies of youth, sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, gendered subjectivities, equity and difference as well as educational reform.Dr. Yang Zhao is a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He specialises in the anthropology of gender, masculinity and health and has been conducting ethnographic research in Central Asia since 2015 and in Ethiopia since 2024. His anthropological approach delves into gender dynamics and social inequalities, with an emphasis on engaging men and boys alongside women, to promote health and well-being in a global context.
  • What men have to say about epigenetics, fertility, and masculinity
    NORMA28 November 2024By Matthew Kearney School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UKMatthew Kearney is the author of The Social Order of Collective Action: The Wisconsin Uprising of 2011 (Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield) about the massive protest that inspired the Occupy Movement. His articles have appeared in Social Forces and Theory and Society, among other journals, and his work has been translated into German and Chinese. In his spare time, he produces and co-hosts Extinction Rebellion Radio, distributed as a podcast and nationally syndicated broadcast. He has taught at Harvard University, Emerson College, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison (where he received his PhD), and is now a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of Liverpool.
  • Antifeminist, manosphere and right-wing extremist sentiment among men who use domestic and family violence: masculinism, misinformation, and the justificatory logics of violence
    NORMA21 November 2024By Lucy Nicholas Sal Clark Christine Agius Kay Cook a School of Social Science, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australiab School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, AustraliaLucy Nicholas is an Associate Professor in Gender and Sexuality / Sociology at Western Sydney University. Their research is interested in diversity broadly, focusing on genders and sexualities, social theory, feminisms, masculinities and whiteness. They have authored and co-authored two books with Palgrave, one on queer and gender theory (Queer Post-Gender Ethics) and one on The Persistence of Global Masculinism, as well as many chapters, reports and journal articles. They are dedicated to ethical empirical research and furthering social theories to understand and challenge subordination of all kinds, and work towards a more co-operative and enabling world.Sal Clark is a lecturer in Politics & Sociology at Swinburne University of Technology. They come from an interdisciplinary background incorporating political theory with sociological methods and has experience conducting qualitative research with marginalised groups. Clark’s research interests broadly encompass forced migration, human rights, bordering practices and the intersection of gender and sexuality and the politics of displacement and exceptionality.Christine Agius is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Politics at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests broadly embrace post-structuralist, feminist and ontological security, foreign and security policy, and bordering practices, which have been applied to cases such as Sweden, Swedish-Russian relations, Australian and US foreign policy, drone warfare, immigration and populist far-right and anti-feminist politics. She is the author of The Social Construction of Swedish Neutrality(Manchester University Press, 2006), co-editor of The Politics of Identity (Manchester University Press, 2018), and co-author of The Persistence of Global Masculinism (Palgrave, 2018).Kay Cook is a Professor and the Associate Dean of Research in the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education at Swinburne University of Technology. Her research explores how new and developing social policies such as welfare-to-work, child support and child care policies, transform relationships between individuals, families and the state. Her work seeks to make the personal impact of these policies explicit in order to provide tangible evidence to policy makers to affect more humanistic reform.
  • Fathers and sons in Marcos Zimmermann’s Desnudos sudamericanos
    NORMA05 November 2024By Jonathan A. Allan English, Drama, and Creative Writing Gender and Women's Studies, Brandon University, Brandon, Manitoba, CanadaJonathan A. Allan is Canada Research Chair in Men and Masculinities and Professor in the Department of English, Drama, and Creative Writing and the Gender and Women's Studies Program at Brandon University. He is the author of Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin (University of Regina Press 2024).
  • Femonationalism in the civic-integration work conducted by a Swedish NGO with men’s groups
    NORMA15 October 2024By Joakim Johansson Jamshid Dashti a Department of Economics and Political Science, Mälardalen University, Västerås and Eskilstuna, Swedenb Probation Service, Stockholm, SwedenJoakim Johansson is an associate professor and senior lecturer in political science at Mälardalen University. He has conducted a number of studies on various aspects of men and masculinity in contexts of Swedish politics. He has also studied attitudes on diversity, discrimination, ethnic relations and integration. His recent research output includes ‘Securitisation of the Swedish migration policy and the situation for unaccompanied children’ (co-authored with Mehrdad Darvishpour and Niclas Månsson), published by Routledge in the interdisciplinary research anthology Crisis and the Culture of Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary Europe (Zamorano, Stier & Gray 2024).Jamshid Dashti is a political scientist currently working as a probation inspector within The Swedish Prison and Probation Service. Dashti grew up in Afghanistan and went to Sweden as a refugee. He wrote his candidate thesis on migrant groups activities in Sweden.
  • Ethics in critical studies of men and masculinities: an absent presence?
    NORMA08 October 2024By Klara Goedecke Karlstad University, Sweden
  • Insuring masculinity: negotiating reproductive vulnerability and control through sperm storage
    NORMA03 October 2024By Stine Willum Adrian Charlotte Kroløkke a Department of Social Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norwayb Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, DenmarkStine Willum Adrian is a Professor in Sociology at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. She holds a PhD in feminist STS and she has a background in medical sociology. Adrian’s work is interdisciplinary joining ethnography of gender, medical technologies, feminist theories, ethics and law. She has conducted a number of large ethnographic studies focused on sperm banking and assisted reproduction and is engaged in the biopolitics of reproductive technologies of life and death. Adrian is published in journals such as: the European Journal of Women’s and Gender Studies, BioSocieties, Science as Culture and Australian Feminist Studies.Charlotte Kroløkke is a Professor in Cultural Studies in the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. She has been the principal investigator of several large collective research projects and positions her own work as the doing of feminist cultural science studies. Kroløkke’s research interests deal with reproductive politics, technological developments and notably, the hoorays that accompany them, human-nonhuman forms of kinship, and multispecies ethnography. Kroløkke has recently published in i.e. European Journal of Women’s and Gender Studies, New Genetics and Society, Science as Culture, Culture, Health and Sexuality.
  • From liberation to rights: the organized men’s movement in Norway, 1978–1980
    NORMA20 September 2024By Simon Gramvik Master of History, University of Oslo, Oslo, NorwaySimon Gramvik holds a master's degree in history and a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary gender studies from the University of Oslo. His research focuses on social history and gender politics. Simon currently works as a freelance writer, continuing his independent research on these topics.
  • ‘As a father, I like to develop and grow’ – fathering and privileges among white, heterosexual & highly educated men in the Netherlands
    NORMA21 August 2024By Carole Ammann Paula Vermuë Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development, ETH Zurich, Zurich, SwitzerlandDr. Carole Ammann, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher with an interdisciplinary background in social anthropology and African studies. Her specialisation is in the anthropology of gender with a specific focus on femininities, masculinities, and intersectionality. She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Europe and West Africa. In her current project, she researches LGBTIQ+ parenting in Switzerland.Paula Vermuë is currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at the Geneva Graduate Institute, where she is conducting research on changing family dynamics in East Africa, with a specific focus on fatherhood in Uganda. Previously, Paula worked as a junior lecturer and research assistant in the anthropology department at the University of Amsterdam and as a researcher at the Department of Primary and Community Care of Radboudumc.
  • Intersectionality and masculinities studies, go together like a horse and carriage
    NORMA12 July 2024By Katarzyna Wojnicka University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Nuancing Young Masculinities: Helsinki Boys’ Intersectional Relationships in New Times
    NORMA09 June 2024By Inka Tähkä University of Helsinki
  • Aging masculinities in contemporary U.S. fiction
    NORMA09 June 2024By Pierre-Antoine Pellerin University of Lyon, Lyon, France
  • Chinese men’s practices of intimacy, embodiment and kinship: crafting elastic masculinity
    NORMA07 June 2024By Siming Yu Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Rural masculinity in protest: farmer’s political movements in modern Poland as sites of rural masculinities’ reproduction
    NORMA23 May 2024By Marta GospodarczykDoctoral School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, PolandMarta Gospodarczyk is a PhD candidate at the University of Warsaw, Poland (Doctoral School of Social Sciences/Faculty of Sociology). Her research interests lie in the nexus of rurality and gender, especially rural masculinities. Her doctoral project attempts to investigate the consequences of drought on farming households, with a specific focus on changes in gendered labour patterns.

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