My ESRC-funded doctoral research explored relationships with weight and shape with a sample of trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming adults. My analysis focused on embodiment and negotiations of the body in terms of the ways it is experienced as well as externally defined/assigned. My research interests are queer and contemporary phenomenologies, critical weight and Fat Studies, trans and gender diverse health and health inequalities, and LGBTQ+ youth mental health.
Over the last two decades, literature in the form of case studies and, in more recent years, survey and matched control studies of varying scales has emerged exploring the experience of disordered or potentially harmful eating practices among people of transgender experience. While aspects of this work are useful, the approaches taken are framed very much within psychiatric and clinical definitions and understandings of both disordered eating and transgender identity, with consequences that in some cases are detrimental to the scope and outcomes.
Moving away from the approaches that characterise this body of work, the research I propose draws upon work on the body and embodiment to explore relationships with food and eating in their profoundly embodied aspects in order to explore the role that food performs for people of transgender experience, particularly in terms of the navigation of the powerful social, cultural and medical discourses about trans bodies that continue to circulate with tremendous influence.
Department: Health Research
f.mcnulty@lancaster.ac.uk
PhD Sociology | Lancaster University | Oct 2016 – Sept 2021 | Thesis: The Weight of (Im)possibility: Exploring body weight and shape with trans and gender non-conforming people
MA Gender and Women’s Studies (Distinction) | Lancaster University | 2013 – 2015 | Thesis: ‘Why isn’t there something for us?’ Cisgenderism in research on eating distress in the UK transgender population
BA (Joint Hons) Drama and English Literature (First Class) | University of Manchester | 2008 – 2011
Certificate of attainment of status of Associate Fellow | Higher Education Authority | 2019
