Transitional States

Hormone research and treatments have had a major impact on ideas about the body and health, sexual attitudes and behaviours, human freedom, and theories of race and eugenics. Throughout the twentieth century and even today, hormone treatments have brought enormous benefits to human beings, but their many uses have also had some contradictory implications.

Transitional States: Hormones at the Crossroads of Art and Science

Transitional States is an international programme that uses video art and public discussions to raise awareness of the significance hormones treatments have had in the past and how they are used today. The programme launches at the University of Lincoln in February 2018 to celebrate the LGBT History Month. Project Space hosts the video art installation, which features 15 international artists and collectives that explore how we can use hormones to gain control over and change our bodies. The public discussions explore the representation of transgender and non-binary people in film, media and culture; the medicalisation and de-medicalisation of LGBTIQ people in British culture; and the medicalisation of women in Western society.

Transitional States is linked to a 5 year Wellcome Trust grant to develop a new research project,  ‘Sexology, Hormones, and Medical Experiments in the “Latin Atlantic World”: Local Power and International Networks, 1918-1985’, which explores the history of sexology and how hormone treatments developed in Southern Europe and Latin America in the twentieth century.

Project Lead

Dr Chiara Beccalossi, School of History and Heritage