School of Sociology and Social Policy

Dates: 01 May 2008 - 01 May 2010

Representing the civil recognition of gender transition, the Gender Recognition Act (GRA, 2004) marks an important change in attitudes towards transgender people; enabling the change of birth certificates and granting transgender people the right to marry in their acquired gender.

Crucially, the legislation detaches the legal recognition of 'sex' from the requirement of surgical intervention, and thus brings a new framework for understanding 'sex' and gender and the relationship between these concepts.

These developments reflect broader social changes around the conceptualisation and the practices of identity. The impact of the GRA upon individual lives and community practices is likely to have been profound, yet there is no systematic academic research on this new legislation.

This project seeks to understand these transformations by considering how transgender people variously understand and experience this changing policy landscape. Thus the project will qualitatively examine the impact of the GRA on the formation and the experiences of individual and collective transgender identities.

Moreover, the project seeks to understand the social relations, identities and cultural values that shaped the GRA, and the ways in which the GRA has shaped these in turn. Consequently, the project will not only explore subjective experience, but will also examine the ways in which 'experience' is constructed through policy.

A range of qualitative methods will be employed to collect date, including one-to-interviews; focus group interviews; virtual research methods and textual/policy analysis.