Institutional intimacy: gender, contested sexuality and relationships in the 19th Century British Parliament

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This PhD looks at individual encounters and intimate relationships, especially as experienced by womenand minority groups, that influenced the Nineteenth Century Parliament. The overarching researchquestion is: what 'work' was emotion (and specifically emotion tied to intimate relationships) doing in thecontemporary Parliament? What was the nature of intimacy's entanglement with elite politics and aheteronormative masculinised political institution?The PhD asks about currently under-researched areas of political/social history. How did the idealisedVictorian "sexless moral angel" interact with the "irrepressibly carnal" political man (Poovey 1989)? Howdid contested sexualities queer traditional, binary oppositions? What evidence can we find of hiddenintimacies and clandestine affairs, and how were these described and interpreted by their protagonists,and others? How were these dynamics refracted by class? What were the hierarchies of power-sexualand non-sexual-within Parliament? What constituted a parliamentary 'scandal', and how did these playout?