Professor Jana Funke (she/her)

My research focuses on modernist literature and culture, the history of sexuality, sexual science and medicine, and queer/feminist studies. I have recently co-edited (with Dr Elizabeth English and Dr Sarah Parker) a new edited collection entitled Interrogating Lesbian Modernisms: Histories, Forms, Genres (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) and have completed (with Dr Hannah Roche) the first ever critical edition of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (Oxford University Press, 2024). I am currently completing three monographs: Sexological Modernism: Queer Feminism and Sexual Science (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), Sexperts: A History of Sexology (Reaktion Press, 2024) and a book on the interdisciplinary history of sexology jointly authored with Professor Kate Fisher.

Previous books include The World and Other Unpublished Works by Radclyffe Hall (MUP, 2016), which was featured on BBC Radio 4 Open Book, and the co-edited volumes Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (Palgrave, 2011) and Sculpture, Sexuality and History: Encounters in Literature, Culture and the Arts (Palgrave, 2019). I have also co-edited (with Dr Sherri Lynn Foster) a special journal issue on Feminist Encounters with the Medical Humanities (2018).

In 2015, I was awarded a Wellcome Trust Joint Investigator Award to direct (together with Kate Fisher) a seven-year project on the cross-disciplinary history of sexual science. In 2014, I was selected to participate in the AHRC and Wellcome Trust-funded New Generations in Medical Humanities Programme. I am strongly committed to making my research accessible to wider audiences and collaborating with non-academic publics. Past work includes Orlando: The Queer Element (led by Clay & Diamonds), the Transvengers (led by Gendered Intelligence), Dangerous Influences (in collaboration with Dreadnought South West) and various contributions to the Wellcome Collection’s Institute of Sexology Exhibition and its engagement programme, Sexology Season. I also co-directed the Transformations project (2019-2020) in collaboration with Gendered Intelligence and artist Jason Barker, which resulted in the Adventures in Time and Gender podcast and website. From 2020-2022, I co-directed the Out and About: Queering the Museum project in collaboration with socially engaged artist Natalie McGrath and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter.

I am one of the Coordinators of the University's LGBTQ+ Staff Network.

My pronouns are she/her.

Key interests:

• Modernist Literature and Culture
• History of Sexuality
• History of Sexual Science
• Feminist Theory, Gender Studies and Queer Theory
• Medical Humanities

You can sign up for my Office Hours here. My office is in Room 155, Queen's East Wing.

Research supervision:

I am happy to work with students interested in:

• modernist literature and culture, especially queer/lesbian/feminist/trans modernism
• history of sexuality and gender
• medical humanities
• history of science and medicine, especially sexual science/medicine
• LGBTQ+ history, literature and culture
• feminist, queer and trans studies