Professor Clarissa Smith

Professor

School: Design Arts and Creative Industries

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My research centres on sexual media and representations. I am interested in the textual formations of pornography and how those play out across different technologies; in how people access and engage with pornographic materials and with other forms of sexualized products. I’m also fascinated by seemingly constant demands for increasing regulation and censorship.

I have written about the problems of attempts to legislate against pornography and have been active in opposing measures which seek to criminalise the imagination. Alongside this work, I have explored porn-star performances, the meanings of masochism in sexual storytelling, the idea of ‘authenticity’ in pornography, and how audiences speak about the sexual content they like.

Recent publications:

Sexualised Masculinity: Men’s Bodies in 21st Century Media Culture, co-authored with John Mercer (Birmingham City University) and available open access via this link.

Watching Game of Thrones: What Audiences Do With Dark Television - an examination of audience responses to the HBO series co-authored with Martin Barker and Feona Attwood and published by Manchester University Press.

Objectification On the Difference between Sex and Sexism (Gender Insights) was published by Routledge in August 2020. Authored with Susanna Paasonen, Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, and John Mercer, the book traces the history of the emergence and use of objectification in a variety of contexts such as debates about sexualization and the male gaze, and its mobilization in connection with the body, selfies and pornography, as well as in feminist activism.

I am a founding co-editor of the Routledge journal Porn Studies, a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Gender Studies, of Sexualities, of Cine-Excess and of Participations.

Between 2019 and 2022, I was co-investigator with Professor John Mercer, Birmingham City University (PI) on the Masculinity, Sex and Popular Culture research network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The network connected academics, early career researchers and students as well as experts and commentators from outside of academia. Together we explored the issues and debates around contemporary masculinity, sex and sexuality in order to set an ambitious agenda for subsequent research. You can see what the network achieved at our website https://mascnet.org/

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Sexualised Masculinity: Men's Bodies in 21st Century Media Culture, Mercer, J., Smith, C. 10 Feb 2025
Ten years of Porn Studies; 10 years of porn studies, Attwood, F., Smith, C. Feb 2025, In: Porn Studies
Watching Game of Thrones: How Audiences Engage with Dark Television , Barker, M., Smith, C., Attwood, F. 1 Apr 2021
Sexting among British adults: a qualitative analysis of sexting as emotion work governed by ‘feeling rules’, Macdowall, W., Reid, D., Lewis, R., Bosó Pérez, R., Mitchell, K., Maxwell, K., Smith, C., Attwood, F., Gibbs, J., Hogan, B., Mercer, C., Sonnenberg, P., Bonell, C. 2 May 2023, In: Culture, Health and Sexuality
Online Sexual Partner Seeking as a Social Practice: Qualitative Evidence from the 4th British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-4), Reid, D., Macdowall, W., Lewis, R., Hogan, B., Mitchell, K., Bosó Pérez, R., Gibbs, J., Smith, C., Attwood, F., Mercer, C., Sonnenberg, P., Bonell, C. 13 Oct 2022, In: Journal of Sex Research

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Other: Visiting Professor 2025
Invited talk: Humour, Pathos, and Provocation: Deconstructing Adult Material and Its Contradictions 2023
Invited talk: Shifting Narratives: Pornography, Politics and Power 2023
Invited talk: Authenticity in Feminist Pornography 2021
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Deplatforming Sex 2021
Invited talk: Men in Movement, V: Masculinities and Feasible Futures 2021
Invited talk: Sansa & Ramsay Audience Reactions 2021
Invited talk: The Future of Masculinities 2021
Oral presentation: Critical Studies in Television Slow Covid-Safe Conference 2021 2021
Invited talk: Digital intimacies: What increasing visibility online means for young people’s privacy, relationships, and safety 2021

PGR Supervision

Marta Roman Start Date: 15/09/2025 End Date: 17/10/2025
Marta Roman Start Date: 15/09/2025 End Date: 15/05/2026
Mathilde Friis Sex Worker Art and the Care of Curating: Labour, Living Archives, and the Making of WORKING GIRLS! Start Date: 01/10/2022
Mathilde Friis Art, Sex Work, and the Market: exploring Artists Self-Representation through Exhibition-making Start Date: 01/10/2022 End Date: 17/10/2025
Karis King Sex and Sexuality in British Television Documentary (2013—present) Start Date: 01/10/2022 End Date: 05/09/2025