For the past thirty years there have been vigorous debates about the roles played by gender, sexuality and sexual orientation in research. This collection brings together the debates together, set them into their historical and theoretical context, and deal with the major criticisms and refutations. A particular strength of this collection is that it will available a key sources otherwise scattered and hard to obtain.



Volume I discusses three sub-themes, the context in which gender became a matter of concern for researchers, the context in which feminist methods were developed, and the (re)discovery of the methodological work of well-known women such as Jane Addams and Florence Nightingale. Volume II looks at research that has been conducted with explicit awareness of gender. Volume III focuses on the pioneering work of innovative scholars who argued for feminist methods in the years after 1950. It then goes on to investigate research that defended and debated the formulations of feminist methods. Finally, volume IV explicitly relates the themes of Queer Theory, Subaltern Theory and Polyvocality, themes that evolved with feminist methods, to those topics showcased in the other three volumes.