Q&A with Dr Peter Dunne

Gender studies can play a crucial role in ongoing legal and political conversations.

Dr Peter Dunne is an Associate Professor at the University of Bristol Law School, and an Associate Member of Garden Court Chambers, London. Peter’s research centres on the intersections of law, gender and sexuality.

Where are you visiting us from?

I’m currently an Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of Bristol. I’ve been at Bristol since I started my career almost ten years ago. Since 2022, I’ve primarily been working on a Future Leaders Fellowship project, funded by UK Research and Innovation. I’m also an Associate Member of Garden Court Chambers, which is chamber of barristers in London. Until very recently, Garden Court was actually located next door to the LSE in Lincolns Inn Fields.

What will you be researching in your time here?

Since 2022, I’ve been working on a larger project, which explores the status of trans and non-binary people, and their families, in the law. This project mainly focuses on the legal situation in England and Wales, but it also has a key comparative element – something that I’ve really enjoyed and that I hope to develop further during the second phase of my fellowship (2026-2029). During my time at the LSE, I’m working on two specific aspects of the larger project.

First, over the past three years, partnering with academic colleagues from outside of the law and with LGBTI civil society groups across Europe, I’ve been exploring the experiences of non-binary people with the law in Europe and Central Asia. The project considers both current realities, as well as desires for reform, for non-binary people throughout the region. While at the LSE, I’ll be working on the initial data analysis for that project, hoping to publish a joint report with academic and civil society partners later in 2026.

Second, once again in collaboration with academic colleagues and civil society partners, I’ve also been researching the voice of trans and non-binary young people in England and Wales. Conscious of moving away from the paradigm of public discussions about, rather than with, trans and non-binary adolescents, this work seeks to highlight the priorities, needs and experiences of a group of such young people living in England and Wales. While at the LSE, I’ll be analysing data gathered through workshops with young people, and jointly developing initial outputs from the project.

Why did you want to visit LSE and the Department of Gender Studies as part of your research?

I wanted to visit the Department of Gender Studies for a number of reasons. As a preeminent centre for the study of gender and sexuality, I was interested in engaging with colleagues at the LSE, across both the humanities and the social sciences, to place my mainly legal research in a broader, inter-disciplinary context. The themes that I am currently exploring – trans parenthood, childhoods beyond the gender binary, gender identity and exceptionalism – are all questions which have been (and remain) key areas of inquiry outside of legal academia. Visiting the LSE has allowed me to approach my work through new normative and methodological lenses – drawing from a wider range of scholarly interventions than I have previously incorporated into my work. Not only have I benefitted from the expertise of colleagues and from the significant resources within the Department of Gender Studies, but I have also enjoyed attending events across the broader LSE – having the opportunity to think about my research in novel (and sometimes challenging) ways.

What do you hope will be the impact of your research?

My broader UKRI project has three main aims. First, in an area of growing political debate, where the contours of the law often remain uncertain, my research seeks to provide greater clarity about the current rights and status of trans and non-binary people. Second, I am interested in creating greater awareness about the lived experience of the law, particularly the ways in which current legal frameworks meet (or fail to meet) the needs of different trans and non-binary populations. Finally, exploring the priorities and perspectives of different stakeholders, my research asks whether there is a case for reforming the law, in the UK and across Europe, as it applies to trans and non-binary people.

What have you enjoyed most about visiting the department?

I have particularly enjoyed participating in the numerous public talks and symposia organised at the department during my stay. These events have been a great opportunity to engage with colleagues across the department, and they speak to the high (and somewhat unique) level of community that is fostered between academics, PGRs and taught students within the department. As a researcher working primarily outside the specific field of gender studies, I have also found these events an incredibly interesting and helpful entrée into reflecting upon my subject matter in new ways, and in creating connections across jurisdictional and disciplinary boundaries.

Why is Gender Studies an important discipline to study and research?

In recent years, status-based questions concerning sex and gender have become high-profile topics in legal and political discourse. From domestic parliaments to the most senior national and European courts, politicians and judicial actors are increasingly asked to define both the contours and operation of sex and gender in diverse factual and legal scenarios.

While, for some observers, the outcomes of these legal and political conversations have created much-needed certainty, other commentators are less convinced with the ways in which such debates have unfolded. Reflecting on recent policy and court-based developments in the UK, for example, many scholars point to key problems in the historical, legal and socio-political analysis adopted. The result is a flattened, uncomplicated understanding of sex and gender, which rarely reflects the complex, highly nuanced ways in which these concepts actually operate in society.

Gender studies can play a crucial role in these ongoing legal and political conversations – not only helping to identify the deficiencies in current attitudes and policies relating to sex and gender, but also offering a more complicated, rigorous and evidence-based framework through which to design (and critique) reforms.