Dr. Mathew Gagné (he/him), Assistant Professor
BA Honours (University of Winnipeg), MA & Ph.D. (University of Toronto)
OC 221.9, Mathewgagne@trentu.ca
Classes you teach:
SOCI 2151 - Researching Social Life
SOCI 2430 - Sociology of Gender
SOCI 3151 - Practicing Social Research
SOCI 3440 - Sexuality & the Social
SOCI 4630 - Advanced Seminar in Gender
Research Interests:
Queer media practices and social inclusion, Media, technology and sexuality, dating and intimacy, digital nomads
How does your research translate into your teaching, both through courses and supervision?
My research informs my teaching by way of the subject matter. My courses, generally, reflect my research interests in gender, sexuality, media and technology. In class, I tend to cover topics related to the formation of gender and sexual cultures and identities, particularly at the global scale, which incorporates studying processes of racialization, globalization, and mobility. A core theme in both my research and teaching is to explore how queerness travels globally, refracting into various identities and forms of social inclusion at the local level. Additionally, I bring my interest in studying the relationship between sexuality, technology and power into the classroom. My research examines how various forms of power shape and normalize sexuality, while investigating how queer and trans people contest and transform these forms of power, especially looking at the media practices and cultures queer and trans people develop to foster new identities, communities and intimacies that aim to transform power’s effects and create new forms of social inclusion and belonging. I bring this same approach to all my classes whereby I cover topics related to how power normalizes sexuality while also exploring how people contest and transform these processes of normalization.
Five publications that exemplify your work:
- Gagné, M. (2026). “’Friends and Fun’ as a Queer Relation in Beirut.” In Critical Friendship in the Modern World, Laura Eramian & Peter Mallory (eds.). Cambridge University Press.
- Gagné, M. (2024). “Methodological Reflections on Studying Gay Sex in Beirut.” In Queer Data Studies, Patrick Keilty (ed.). University of Washington Press.
- Gagné, M. (2022). “Gay Sex Apps and Heteronormative Masculinity in Beirut.” In Sex in the Middle East and North Africa, L.L. Wynn and Angel M. Foster (eds.). Vanderbilt University Press.
- Gagné, M. (2019). “Studying Gay Sex in Beirut: The Lascivious Suture of Home/Field.” In Home: Ethnographic Encounters, Johannes Lenhard and Farhan Samanani (eds). Pp. 31-44. Bloomsbury.
- Gagné, M. (2012) “Queer Beirut Online: The Participation of Men in GayRomeo.com.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Special edition: Queering Middle East Cyberspace, 8(3): 113-137.
What achievements and/or contributions in research are you most proud of?
My work has contributed to the study of queerness in the Middle East/Southwest Asia and to the study of digital technologies, intimacy and the body. One of the main themes explored in my work is how the production of sexual meanings and identities online are entangled with the pre-existing socio-political conditions that define men’s offline life. I argue that the entanglement of local identities and sexualized meanings and queer desires produces new forms of self-description and embodied practice online as a queer Lebanese subject. I’ve also shown how digital media and dating apps have forged new queer counter publics in Lebanon that incorporate new forms of power and culture. In disseminating this research, I have published several peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and academic website blog posts. These publications have been cited in papers concerning queer life in Beirut, the experiences of Syrian refugees, and the politics of queerness in the Middle East. My arguments about how queer men in Beirut coded their bodies within these apps has been cited in work on the digital body more broadly.
I’ve published on the ethics and methodologies of using digital media to study intimate, private matters. These pieces foreground the importance of intersubjectivity and reflexibility in ethnographic fieldwork. I take a holistic approach to studying digital culture and life that doesn’t just look at what is posted to digital media, but looks at how people use them, talk about them while offline as well. This requires a methodology that centers on paying attention to practices and situated contexts and not just discourse and language and meaning. In Methodological Reflections on Studying Gay Sex in Beirut, a chapter in Queer Data Studies (University of Washington Press), I explore how using digital media to study social phenomena means asking people for their literal data, the same information they use to converse, which puts researchers in new ethical positions for negotiating reciprocity as part of the participation within a digital realm.