Professor Chris Brickell
BA(Hons) PhD(Well)
Much of my research focuses on the connections between sexuality, gender and identity, drawing on sociological and historical approaches. I am continuing to develop my interests in histories of same-sex sexuality and intimacy, and in various aspects of cultural change in postwar New Zealand – especially in terms of gender relations.
Latest Blog Entries
Jun 1, 2026
Charlie Haigh, born in 1888, lived with his partner Robert Gant for nearly three decades. A newly discovered photo invites us into their domestic world.
May 1, 2026
Salacious reports in a tabloid newspaper open the door to a look at the queer life of Lyttelton gaol at the start of the twentieth century.
Apr 5, 2026
Cranleigh Barton was a discreetly homosexual New Zealand lawyer and artist. In 1915, a friend sent him the campest of letters.
Latest Books
Robert Lord, a pioneering gay playwright with a witty and sardonic style, lived in both New Zealand and New York during the 1970s and 1980s. These diaries tell of his complex expatriate life, his friends, and his work.
James Courage, author of A Way of Love, is one of New Zealand's most overlooked gay writers but he was one of our best.
Queer lives give rise to a vast array of objects: the things we fill our houses with, the commodities we consume at work and at play, the clothes and accessories we wear, as well as the analogue and digital technologies we use to communicate with one another.