Inclusion Consulting
“Joy writes fluently and clearly about complex ideas: a rare gift. This is a highly sophisticated account of the theoretical terrain on which debates about women’s sexual subjectivity are and have been contested... In conceptual terms, the strongest and most original part of Joy’s thesis is the nuanced analysis of the possibilities and limits of agency within a neo-liberal context.”
My area of expertise is in the field of gender and sexualities. My consulting and research practice is focussed on diversity and inclusion in the context of organisational culture.
Much of my work has been across sensitive and complex issues, requiring high level interviewing and data analysis skills, as well as refined stakeholder management to navigate politically sensitive and delicate organisational spaces.
I have been working as an applied social researcher & consultant for almost a decade, designing and delivering end-to-end impactful research, both independently and in teams, for a diverse array of clients across both the public and private sector. I use my research skills to provide stakeholders with in-depth insights into people’s lived experiences, which are then used to inform evidence-based strategies for change initiatives.
My research and consulting ethos centres on the following four values: Human centred; evidence based; outcome driven; and sustainable. Research that prioritises an understanding of peoples lived experience is fundamental for effective policy-making and implementation. I employ a range of qualitative methodologies to generate insightful understanding of complex issues. I am passionate about partnering with individuals and organisations who desire to think differently, and I practice a collaborative approach when it comes to the delivery of outcome-driven research.
My academic research portfolio is focussed in the area of critical sexuality studies and includes a number of empirical qualitative studies on topics relating to young women’s sexuality. My approach is profoundly interdisciplinary – stretching across the disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, queer studies, women’s and gender studies as well as pulling from the schools of philosophy and literary studies.
For my doctoral thesis ‘Her Sexual Self’ I employed a narrative methodological design to present a nuanced examination of young women’s sexualities. The study brings the lived experiences of young women into dialogue with existing theoretical arguments concerning agency. For this project, I was a recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award. Have a read of the abstract below :)
Her Sexual Self: A narrative investigation of young women’s sexual subjectivities
In scholarship on women’s sexuality, there has been an increasing interest in sexual subjectivities – that is, how women make sense of and “story” their experiences of sexuality. However, much of the literature presents an unhelpful dichotomy whereby young women are framed as either victims/cultural dupes or as radically empowered, always “up-for-it” agents. Such a polarisation suggests that a more complex analysis of young women’s sexual subjectivities would be beneficial. This thesis aims to provide a nuanced examination of young women’s sexualities by exploring the ways young women’s sexual selves can be understood as both agentic (chosen and self-directed) and determined (i.e. constituted and constrained by forces outside of themselves).
A narrative methodological design has been employed. Twenty-six life-history-style interviews were conducted with heterosexual and non-heterosexual women aged between 18 and 31 in order to explore the complex ways in which the young women’s sexual subjectivities are entangled with the (neo-liberal) Western culture in which they are produced. A post-structuralist approach utilises Foucault’s later work on “care of the self” to identify some of the manoeuvres that the young women agentically employ to transform their sexual selves. An auto-ethnographic approach and a strong commitment to self-reflexivity leads to the identification of what is defined as an “unconscious agency bias” – that is, the tendency for researchers in neo-liberal contexts to inadvertently over-emphasise agency, sometimes precluding visibility of other interpretations of a scenario.
Finally, the thesis contains a number of “messy” stories including young women’s accounts of intermittent sexual “rampaging”, as well as a fraught – yet critical – exploration of the complexities of consent, particularly with regards to the distinctions between non-consensual and unwanted sex. By integrating the empirical, the theoretical and the self-reflexive, this thesis aims to extend the extant literature on young women’s sexual subjectivities, by providing new case studies, a more finely grained and textured discussion of agency, and an exploration of the cultural imperative to experience sexual pleasure threaded throughout the young women’s accounts.
“This is an original and valuable piece of work. There's a very good (difficult to achieve!) balance between clear discussion and a form of analysis which refuses to edit out mess, chaos, and complexity... What I was particularly impressed with was the way Joy demonstrates that complexity is ordinary and everyday; something that everyone has to deal with; part of lived experience - it's not arcane or 'theoretical'.”
— Author and Professor, Feona Attwood