Associate Professor Tracey Nicholls PhD Philosophy

Online misogyny functions to silence women, it is pervasive and increasing in intensity. We urgently need new ways to understand and respond to this threat to civil society. Bringing feminist theories of misogyny, affect, and intersectionality into dialogue, we conceptualise online misogyny as patriarchally motivated policing, strategically targeting women exercising leadership who take up public space, enacted through a networked public, and felt in the body. Arguing that it is through these embodied, felt experiences that online misogyny enacts power, our research will centre the collective experience of these feelings in a transdisciplinary project employing creative research methods. The research will involve four integrated work packages that will advance theory; create new understandings of the embodied experience of online misogyny, including Indigenous experiences; and identify forms of resistance to its impacts. This work will employ novel collaborative inquiry methods, including paired interviews with women leaders (politicians, journalists, and academics); all-women arts-based explorations of how misogyny feels; and gender diverse group discussions that will use biofeedback and film to explore the affective power of misogyny. Combined, the project will significantly advance knowledge of online misogyny, shape public and academic discourse, and envision possibilities for future gender equity in public participation.