Me, Margaret Lowenfeld and Margaret Mead: Queer Kinship in the Past and in the Present

Visiting Scholar in Sexuality Studies Talk with Katherine Hubbard

Date: April 22, 2025
Time: 11:00am - 12:30pm ET
Location: Online
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/C-XVQvXpQTmwMC1xcokM2Q

Margaret Lowenfeld (1890-1973) and Margaret Mead (1901-1978) met in 1948. This eventful first meeting in London was the start of a fascinating working friendship, albeit a somewhat uneven one. The two women share particular similarities across their careers, including their positions as women in their respective fields of psychology and anthropology, though Mead was notably more renowned. They also both had substantial and long-lasting relationships with other women. I similarly met them both in London, albeit over seventy years later, in an archive. In this talk I provide a personal and reflexive account of the production and analysis of my article 'Being captured by queer kinship: Margaret Lowenfeld and Margaret Mead' which is in press with History of the Human Sciences. In doing so I will reveal some of the often unspoken aspects of writing queer history. I discuss what a lesbian feminist historical approach uniquely provides and the emotions involved in such work, alongside the challenges of publishing reflexive or unusual queer feminist work. Throughout, I embark on a mission to position myself and various events in my life explicitly to highlight the kinships which extend back to the past. I also recognize and identify the queer feminist networks of care that have been undeniably critical for me to be able to produce this analysis in the present. In presenting this material I aim to not only argue how essential feminist thinking is on a theoretical level, but to also show essential feminist action is on a practical level, in producing feminist scholarship.

Katherine Hubbard is Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey. Her research and teaching are interdisciplinary, including sociological, psychological and historical components. At present, she is centrally focused on research areas pertaining to feminist histories of Psychology, sexuality, and queer studies. Her work takes a distinctive affirmative and inclusive approach. She is especially known for multi-methods research on queer feminist British history, analysis of gendered power within Psychology and broad applications of queer theory. Her books include Queer Ink: A Blotted History Towards Liberation (2020) and A Feminist Companion to Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology (2024). Her current book-based project is Queer Studies: The Basics (due 2025) with co-author and collaborator Dr David Griffiths. Other recent collaborations include, the excavation of feminist voices in Psychology in the UK, an LGBTQ+ inclusive historical analysis of aversion therapy as practised in the UK, and a project studying the role of affect when doing queer history.

She is one of the founding members of the Sex, Gender and Sexuality Research Group at the University of Surrey, is a past Chair of the University LGBTQI Equality Group, and was the first Programme Director for the interdisciplinary MSc course in Sex, Gender and Sexuality studies having established it. She is also a Co-I on the FUTURESEX initiative which aims to bridge academic, activist and community groups and an international member of Psychology's Feminist Voices. She received the American Psychological Association (Society for the History of Psychology Division 26) career award (2024).