Em Cousens (they/them) is Director of UK and European Initiatives for the Digital Transgender Archive and Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations at Northeastern University, London. They are a double award-winning educator with a PhD in Philosophy from Oxford Brookes, and received their MA and BA from the University of Oxford.
Em has held a research grant from the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust for their project Second Wave Trans Feminisms in Print, which explores the contributions to feminist philosophy of trans individuals writing in print culture between 1960 and 1980.
Em is the author of Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave (Palgrave, 2023), the first book to explore the philosophical and intellectual contributions of trans individuals in the 1970s. Arguing that the canon of second wave feminism needs to be expanded to include the conversations taking place in print, Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave highlights the non-binary perspectives of sex and gender that were being articulated in trans community publications, underground feminist print publications, and in the more well-known arguments of radical feminists including Andrea Dworkin.
Em is taking expressions of interest from graduate students seeking supervision, especially those interested in pursuing a 1-year MRes (Master’s by Research) in trans+ history, trans+ archives and/or historically grounded trans+ philosophy.
Em has written the following recent articles:
- Subjectivity Without Sex? The Materialist Trans Feminist Potential in Monique Wittig’s Non-Fiction
- Virginia Prince, Robert Stoller and the Trans Feminist Intellectual History of the Sex/Gender Distinction
- Putting the Femme in Feminist: Trans Feminism and the ‘Male Lesbian’ in the American Second Wave
- 1970s transvestite taxonomies and the new queer frontier
- Entering the Archive of Second-Wave Trans Feminist Print Culture: The Journal of Male Feminism
- Androgyny in the Archives: 1970s trans and feminist encounters with the promise and politics of non-binary
Em Cousens 