Wannes Dupont

Biography

Wannes Dupont is Lecturer in the History of Sexuality at the University of Edinburgh. He previously held positions at Yale-NUS College and Utrecht University and fellowships at Yale University, Australian National University, and the University of Antwerp. His work, publications, and teaching primarily concern the European and global history of sexuality, reproductive politics, and the intersections of biopolitics and religion.

Current Projects

Before the Gender Wars: The Globalisation of Sexuality as a Policy issue, 1945-1965

This research and book project forms the centre of my current research activity. It traces the roots of today’s global gender wars during back to the early days of the United Nations.

Unwilling To Know: Homosexuality at the Crossroads of Europe (1870-1965)

This book proejct deconstructs histories of homosexuality that have long assumed the simultaneous emergence of a sexological 'will to know' concerning so-called sexual perversion during the late 19th century across Europe. Comparative analyses with the heretofore unstudied case of Belgium at the centre show highly divergent chronologies and markedly different levels of the discursive production of homosexuality. The book will be published with Cambridge University Press in 2025.

Publications

• DUPONT Wannes, Unwilling To Know: Homosexuality at the Crossroads of Europe (1870-1965), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025, forthcoming.
• DUPONT Wannes, The Ambiguous View Of Sexuality In The Low Countries, The Low Countries, < https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/view-of-sexuality >, last accessed on 21 February 2024.
• DUPONT Wannes, "Gay and Lesbian Liberation in the Low Countries. From Stonewall to Pink Pillar", History Workshop Journal, 92/Autumn, 2021, 151–173.
• DUPONT Wannes, "Pas de Deux, Out of Step. Diverging Chronologies of Homosexuality’s (De)Criminalization in the Low Countries", Tijdschrift voor genderstudies — Journal for Gender Studies, 22/4, 2019, 321-338.
• DUPONT Wannes, "The Two-faced Fifties. Homosexuality and Penal Policy in the International Forensic Community (1945-1965)", Journal of the History of Sexuality, 28/3, 2019, 357-395.