Centre for Gender Studies

The Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS is an interdisciplinary space promoting research and teaching on gender and sexuality with particular reference to Asia, Africa, the Middle East and their diasporas. 

Since its inception in 2005, CGS has become a hub of research and training working to support anti-racist feminisms and social movements challenging normative constructions of gender and sexuality. Our focus on Asia, Africa and the Middle East productively disrupts the teleologies of 'Western' feminism and our critical study of Europe and its 'others' has earned us a reputation as a vivid centre for queer and trans thought, transnational feminisms, critical legal theory and anti-racist knowledge production. 

Grappling with the legacy of SOAS as a training ground for the administrators of Anglophone Empires, at CGS we not only tackle the long complex entanglements of modern feminisms with white imperialism and postcolonial nationalisms, we also incubate new strategies to decolonise feminist scholarship and praxis.

Offering a suite of MA Programmes, Postgraduate Research Degrees, Online Postgraduate Degrees and Short Summer Courses, CGS at SOAS stands at the cutting-edge of postgraduate education for the next generation of change makers with new visions for feminist futures. Drawing annual cohorts of students who have received a wide range of disciplinary training in their undergraduate years in both Global South and Global North contexts, CGS cultivates a unique interdisciplinary space committed to forging connections between feminist scholarship and activism.

With our programmes bringing together a community of students, teachers and researchers embedded in feminist networks and movements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as in Britain and across the Global North, CGS hosts a regular seminar series which creates a space for cross-pollination of ideas across disciplinary and regional boundaries. Open to academics and students as well as to the general public, these seminars create a space for new and cutting-edge feminist scholarship. 

Membership to CGS is open to all academic staff at SOAS and members are drawn from across many academic disciplines. Individuals based in other higher education institutions in the UK with an interest in the study of gender and sexuality as well as students at SOAS can join our mailing list for information about events and happenings at the Centre for Gender Studies.