While student loneliness is increasingly visible on the research agenda, the relationship between gender and loneliness among students remains unclear. This article employs a feminist perspective on loneliness to interrogate the role of masculinity in shaping male students' experiences of loneliness at a UK Russell Group university. We argue that…

Concerns have been voiced about lad cultures in UK universities for approximately five years. The National Union of Students has been especially vocal in airing concerns, which more recently have been taken up by universities through bodies such as Universities UK. A small amount of work has explored students' perspectives about, and experiences…

Universities are increasingly recognized as spaces and cultures where gendered and sexualized harassment is endemic. This article pays close attention to the manifestations of sexualized behaviours in a campus university in the UK, examining some of the ways in which formations of masculinity are encouraged and reproduced through university…

Lad culture is pervasive in UK higher education, fuelling misogyny and violence towards women. Lad culture is commonly described as mix of boorish socialising, drinking, sport and pack behaviour. This study reports on the attitudes and experiences of laddish students from a UK university. Laddish behaviours were ubiquitous in their university…

The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space…

In the context of renewed debates and interest in this area, this paper reframes the theoretical agenda around laddish masculinities in UK higher education, and similar masculinities overseas. These can be contextualised within consumerist neoliberal rationalities, the neoconservative backlash against feminism and other social justice movements,…

Critical theory and research has shown that subjects carry gendered meanings. Numbers opting for Religious Studies (RS) have remained skewed towards girls. Drawing from post-structuralism and masculinities theory, this article critically analyses data from interviews with a group of key stage four boys who had opted for Religious Studies in…

Whilst debate around the sexualisation of culture proliferates across discursive arenas, the potential meanings and impacts for the lives of women, girls and young people dominates discussion. Meanwhile, consideration of men and masculinities remains scarce or only thinly sketched across the field. This viewpoint explores sexualisation as a…

This paper looks at online representations of women and men in science, engineering and technology. We show that these representations largely re/produce dominant gender discourses. We then focus on the question: How are gender cliched images re/produced online? Drawing on a discursive analysis of data from six interviews with web authors, we…

During the last few decades, the South Wales Valleys (UK) have undergone a considerable economic, social, cultural and political transformation, altering youth transitions from school to work. Drawing on a two and a half year ethnographic study, in the paper I concentrate on a group of academically successful young white working-class men aged…

Visual images of students and academics in the UK have traditionally featured men, reflecting the historical predominance of men in these positions. When women were represented, sexist imagery and traditional constructions of femininity were not uncommon. This article explores the ways in which students and academics are constructed in a selection…

This article provides insights into the discourses that legitimate and perpetuate male undergraduate drinking cultures and considers the role of alcohol in communicating hegemonic masculinity within one British university. Taking laddishness as a template of hegemonic masculinity, the article contends that male students' heavy alcohol use is…

This article reports on a recent small-scale phenomenological study into the student experience of the doctoral "viva voce". It was prompted by strong concerns about "viva voce" processes on the part of a Director of Graduate Studies in an English university. The study involved semi-structured interviews with 20 respondents…

Building upon conceptualisations of the sexualisation of space, this paper interrogates the ways in which heterosexual discourses are produced, enforced, legitimised and maintained as dominant within student accommodation. Analysis is derived from interviews with 17 gay male undergraduates attending a UK institution. I detail the micro-level…

In this article, I explore men's educational experiences and aspirations in the context of UK policy discourses of widening participation and migration. Critiquing discourses that oversimplify gendered access to higher education, I develop an analysis of the impact of masculine subjectivities on processes of subjective construction in relation to…