Evie Browne

Role
Research Fellow

Qualifications
2015-2022 DPhil International Development, University of Sussex

2010-2011 MA International Social Development (Distinction), University of East Anglia

2002-2006 MA (Honours) Classical Studies (First Class), University of Edinburgh

Activities
2009-current Research Consultant

Completing desk research efficiently to a high standard, supporting the development of policy and academic reports.

2013-2016 University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education, Tutor

Teaching adult education course ‘Undergraduate Certificate in International Development’; on understanding the practice of international development, and the broad range of strategies, techniques and skills required for working in the field.

My thesis provides a critical ethnographic exploration of the intimate and social relationships of lesbian and bisexual women in Cuba, through the theoretical framework of homonormativities. Through foregrounding the everyday lives of Cuban lesbian and bisexual women, I examine how people perform, subvert or reframe normativities within intimate relationships, family life, community participation, state and international discourses. I analyse the ways in which the socialist context informs these acts, and whether there are tensions or incongruities between global homonormativities and Cuban homonormativities. A central contribution is the finding that homonormativity must be considered in context, as normativities differ from place to place, between societies, and between differing subjectivities. The thesis challenges and complicates ideas of homonormativity and global queer(ness) to include different political and social conceptions of ‘what is normal’, outside the more commonly studied context of democratic systems. Through hearing the voices of lesbian and bisexual women in Cuba, we can push our theoretical understanding of how homonormativities can be resisted, reframed and contextualised, and potentially even decolonised.