BA (Hons) (W Syd) PhD (ANU)Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies
Chair – Postgraduate Committee
Pronouns: she/her
Contact details
Room 5C13, Richardson Building
Tel +64 3 479 8759
Email rebecca.stringer@otago.ac.nz
Research
My research investigates theories, meanings and politics of 'victimhood' in modern and neoliberal times. My book Knowing Victims traces the neoliberal transformation in how we talk about and conceptualise victimization, arguing that neoliberal discourses of personal responsibility and meritocracy recast socially-derived victimization as arising from individual fault.
My current research projects examine the origins of victimology and the visual culture of victimhood. I have held visiting fellowships at the University of Alberta, the University of Sydney and Flinders University, and have shared my research at conferences and events both locally and in Australia, North America, the UK and Europe.
Knowing Victims: Feminism, agency and victim politics in neoliberal times
With Professor Damien Riggs (Flinders) and psychologist A. L. Jones (Alice Miller School), I co-edit the book series Critical Perspectives on the Psychology of Sexuality, Gender, and Queer Studies, which publishes scholarship challenging the way psychology has traditionally thought about bodies, identities, and experience, with a focus on sex, gender, and sexuality.
Critical Perspectives on the Psychology of Sexuality, Gender, and Queer Studies
Download the series flyer (PDF)
Papers
- GEND 201 Introduction to Feminist Theory
- GEND 208 / GEND 308 Governing Bodies
- GEND 209 / GEND 309 Critical Victimology
Postgraduate supervision areas
I will be accepting new expressions of interest again in June 2024.
- Feminism in neoliberal times
- Theorising victimhood, vulnerability, agency, survivorship
- Neoliberalism, inequality and victim politics
- Victimhood and the visual, visual victimology
Completed primary supervisions
- Kayla Stewart (PhD) – I guess that's part of life: The sexual victimisation of Aotearoa university students
- Lily Kay Ross (PhD) – The survivor imperative: An autoethnography of secondary victimization after sexual violence
- Georgia Knowles (MA) – Looking at rape prevention: Representations of sexuality, gender and rape myth in rape prevention poster campaigns
- Marita Leask (MA) – Exceptional choices? A discursive examination of abortion discourses in New Zealand
- Eliza Muirhead (MA) – Reconsidering the nonhuman animal: A multidisciplinary approach
- Lynda Cullen (MA) – From Wonder Woman to Aeon Flux: Women heroes, feminism and femininity in post-war New Zealand
Current primary supervisions
- Bell Murphy (PhD) – Empowerment beyond the neoliberal self: An autoethnography of a feminist self-defence teacher in Aotearoa
- Georgia Knowles (PhD) – Love, gender, and violence - exploring how love and abuse co-exist in the narratives of people who have used and experienced violence
- Charlotte Rattray (PhD) –Trauma, womanhood and landscape in female-led crime drama
- Kirsten Gibson (PhD) – Experiences of women after release from prison
Publications
Stringer, R. (2021). Victimology: From criminality to 'victimity' and the problem of victim blame. In E. Stanley, T. Bradley & S. Monod de Froideville (Eds.), The Aotearoa handbook of criminology. (pp. 257-265). Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press. Chapter in Book - Research
Stringer, R., Smith, D., Spronken-Smith, R., & Wilson, C. (2018). "My entire career has been fixed term": Gender and precarious academic employment at a New Zealand university. New Zealand Sociology, 33(2), 169-201. Journal - Research Article
Stringer, R. (2016). Reflection from the field: Trigger warnings in university teaching. Women's Studies Journal, 30(2), 62-66. Journal - Research Other
Smith, D., Spronken-Smith, R., Stringer, R., & Wilson, C. A. (2016). Gender, academic careers and the sabbatical: A New Zealand case study. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(3), 589-603. doi: 10.1080/07294360.2015.1107880 Journal - Research Article
Stringer, R. (2014). Knowing victims: Feminism, agency and victim politics in neoliberal times. Hove, UK: Routledge, 185p. Authored Book - Research