Sexuality and Shame Conference 2026

Supported by the Wellcome-funded Shame and Medicine Project and part of the Sexual Knowledge Unit, this two-day conference explores how sexuality and shame have been produced, regulated, expressed, and contested across different historical periods and social settings. Situated within the humanities and social sciences, it brings together perspectives from across history, gender studies, queer studies, and women’s studies. The event approaches shame not simply as a private emotion but as a social and institutional force operating through law, medicine, media, education, and everyday discourse, opening space to examine how moral boundaries are enforced, how silences are sustained, and how individuals and communities negotiate stigma within historically specific contexts.

The programme includes keynote lectures, themed panels, workshops, and a methodological roundtable that engage directly with historical sources, archives, and historically situated research methods. Sessions will address emerging researchers, the role of media and moral panic in shaping public understandings of sexuality, the limits of disclosure within sources, and methodological approaches to studying sexual shame.

Featured sessions include Emerging Perspectives, presenting current research by emerging scholars, a Media and Moral Panic workshop, and panels on Limits of Disclosure and Methodologies for Studying Sexual Shame. The conference offers an opportunity to engage with new research, exchange ideas across disciplines, and participate in discussion on the historical study of sexuality and shame.

Speakers include:

Dr Wannes Dupont (Edinburgh): Unwilling To Know Male Homosexuality at the Crossroads of Europe, 1870–1965

Dr Hannah Chanock (Bristol): Teenage Intimacies: Young women, sex and social life in England, 1950-1980

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Host or Publisher The University of Exeter