Professor Surya Monro

PhD in Sociology

  • Professor of Sociology and Social Policy
Publications
ORCiD Google Scholar
photo of Surya Monro

Professor Monro is an expert in the areas of gender, sexuality, citizenship, intersectionality and equality. She has conducted research in India and South Africa as well as a range of European countries. She regularly contributes invited presentations at national and international workshops and conferences. Surya is involved with range of public engagement activities and debates, for example she has been interviewed on Radio 4 four times, and has provided consultation to organisations such as the DWP and NHS England. She is on the editorial board of the journal Sexualities and has edited Special Issues of leading journals, including Critical Social Policy and Culture, Health and Sexuality.

Surya’s pioneering scholarship on transgender issues included seminal papers on citizenship and politics and theory. She wrote a monograph which pushed forwards understandings of transgender and feminism, transgender theory, non-binarism, citizenship and social policy. More recently, her collaborative papers on the Norwegian situation and post-Soviet countries gained prizes from the Council for European Studies and the Gender and Sexual Research Network.

Surya wrote a book about bisexuality in 2015, which topped Palgrave's bestseller list. Her contributions to the study of sex and gender also include the book Sexuality, Equality and Diversity, Palgrave Macmillan (with Diane Richardson) and papers published with leading journals such as Sociology , Sociological Review and Politics and Gender . Surya has an active interest in collaboration with scholars from the Global South, which has included the publication of an edited collection on sexual and gender diversity in Africa(with Zethu Matebeni and Vasu Reddy).  She is a member of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology - COST Action LGBTI+ Social and Economic (in)equalities network See https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA19103/ .  Surya is also a Visiting Researcher at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

Surya Monro gained her PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2001 and joined the University of Loughborough in 2023. She has previously worked at a range of Universities including Cambridge, Keele, Leeds, Sheffield and Huddersfield.

Professor Monro has been awarded 18 research grants worth over 3M from funders including the ESRC, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Foundation, the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the European Social Fund, the Fundamental Rights Agency, and the European Commission (HO2020).

In recent years Surya has led research collaborations with intersex people, academics, and other stakeholders, in projects funded by European Commission’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. The current project, Intersex: New Interdisciplinary Approaches (INIA) is an international network which is training a cohort of ten early stage researchers working collaboratively to develop knowledge that will inform policy and practice across a range of key sectors. The network consortium includes 21 partners from 10 countries. The project started on 1 March 2020 and it lasts for 54 months. Please see https://intersexnew.co.uk/.

Surya is now, together with colleagues, working on a new book for the Routledge Advances in Critical Diversities series, provisionally titled 'A Critical Introduction to Intersex Studies: Intersex, Variations of Sex Characteristics, and DSD.' She is also an active member of an EU COST Action (LGBTI+ Social and Economic (in) equalities (PI Anna Einarsdottier, University of York). In addition, she collaborates with colleagues on 2 projects funded by the University of Huddersfield, and other colleagues internationally,  in order to develop intersex studies going forwards. 

Surya is an expert in the fields of the sociology of sex, sexuality and gender, and in citizenship and intersectionality studies. She also has an active interest in fields such as health, embodiment, children, young people and families, and equality and diversity.  Her work is interdisciplinary, with a strong international focus.

Surya teaches the undergraduate modules of Identities and Inequalities, Social Theories, Sociological Futures, Health, the Body and Culture, and Public Sociology. At postgraduate level she has taught Philosophy and Design in Health and Social Research, and Research Evaluation. Surya also leads the development and implementation of an international Postgraduate Training Network in the field of intersex studies, funded by the European Commission. Surya is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Current

  • Sean Saifa Wall: ‘Intersex Erasure in Social Policy’.
  • Adeline Berry: ‘Older Intersex People: A Study of Narratives across Europe’.
  • Zeynab Peyghambarzadeh: ‘The Construction of Narratives of Sexual Orientation in the Persian-Speaking Communities in the Context of Seeking Asylum in Turkey’.

Recent Completions

  • Ellis Hobson (2023) ‘A Phenomenological Investigation into the Lived Experiences of Transgender Men regarding Discrimination in Medical Settings’ (MRes).
  • Russell Oxley (2023)  ‘Exploration of how Gay Cisgender Young Men aged 16 to 24 Present and Negotiate their Identities’ (MRes).
  • Muhammed Ibrahim Ali (2022) ‘”Dosti, Gandhu, Looti, and Khusra”: A Critical Discourse Analysis on Constructions of British, Non-heterosexual, Pakistani, Muslim Males’ Identities’ (MRes).
  • Jean Hatton (2020) ‘Queering Identities? Lesbian and Bisexual Women who are Professional Youth or Community Workers’ (PhD).
  • Anna Fry (2019)  ‘The Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, Race/Ethnicity, Religiosity, and Non-Heterosexual British South Asian Women and the Implications for Mental Health Care’(PhD).
  • Penny Ralph (2019) ‘Opening the ‘Can of Worms’: An Investigation into Occupational Therapy (OT) Practice in Relation to supporting Client’s Sexual Concerns’ (PhD).
  • Sohail Taj (2018) ‘Domestic Abuse and Islam in the British South Asian Community’ (MRes).
  • Rob Brooks (2016) ‘Occupational Practice in Children and Young People’s Mental Health’ (PhD).
  • Vicky Byrne (2016) ‘Learning Difficulties and Citizenship’ (PhD).
  • Monro, S., Wall, S., and Wood, K. (2023) ‘Intersex Equality and Diversity and Social Policy: Silences, absences, and erasures in Ireland and the UK,  Critical Social Policy. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02610183231175055
  • Berry, A., and Monro, S., (2022) 'Aging in Obscurity: A critical literature review regarding older intersex people', Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, doi/full/10.1080/26410397.2022.2136027
  • Monro, S.,Crocetti, D., and Yeadon-Lee, T. (2019) ‘Intersex/variations of Sex Characteristics and DSD Citizenship in the UK, Italy and Switzerland' Journal of Citizenship Studies, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13621025.2019.1645813
  • Crocetti, D., Monro, S., Vecchietti, V. and Yeadon-Lee, T. (2020) ‘Towards an Agency-Based Model of Variations of Sex Characteristics (VSC) and DSD/dsd Health’, Culture, Health and Sexuality, https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2020.1825815
  • Monro, S., Hines, S., and Osborne, A. (2017) ‘Is Bisexuality Invisible? A review of sexualities scholarship 1970-2015’, Sociological Review. Published online DOI: 10.1177/0038026117695488 | February 1.
  • Monro, S. (2015) Bisexuality: Identities, politics and theories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Richardson, D. and Monro, S. (2012) Sexuality, Diversity, and Equality.  Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
  • Monro, S.  (2005) Gender Politics: Activism, citizenship and sexual diversity.  London: Pluto Press.