Nailya Shamgunova

Nailya Shamgunova, a former Gulbenkian Yuval Scholar at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, completed her PhD in history in 2021. Her doctoral thesis, entitled 'Sodomy and Human Difference: Anglophone Conceptualisations of Ottoman Male Same-=sex Activity, c. 1590-1700', explored vernacular English discourses concerning sexuality and human difference in the early modern period. Before joining the LSE as a Fellow in History of Empire, she worked as a Stipendiary Lecturer in Early Modern European History at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, for two years.

Nailya is currently working on her monograph, provisionally entitled 'Queer Encounters in Early Modern England'. Her research examines the ways in which vernacular English discourses about sexual behaviours developed in tandem with early modern ideas of human difference and race. The key question of her research is whether early modern English writers considered sexuality to be an innate quality of particular types of bodies, determined by their physical constitution and the climate they developed in, a feature determined by the religion and customs of certain peoples, or a behaviour chosen by specific individuals independently of their bodily and cultural contexts. Her other research interests include early modern English contacts with Korea and representation of powerful foreign women in English narrative texts. Expertise Details