Introduction to Bentham’s Defence of Sexual Liberty: Season 1 of UCL Press Play
Posted on 29th October, 2025
Have you heard about UCL Press Play: our podcast and documentary series featuring groundbreaking voices and cutting-edge ideas? Join leading academics as they uncover fresh insights on diverse topics such as queer histories, neurodiversity and climate justice.
Jeremy Bentham’s influence can be felt across the UCL community, but the impact of his radical progressivism can be felt worldwide. In the first season of UCL Press Play, world-renowned academics discuss how Bentham’s ideas were once considered radical but now shape the world we live in. Read on to hear more about the academics who join Professor Philip Schofield, Director of the Bentham Project, to discuss their work. Want to listen to an episode? Just click its name below.
Documentary: Bentham’s Defence of Sexual Liberty, featuring Professor Philip Schofield, Professor Judy Stephenson and Dr Xine Yao
This short documentary uncovers Jeremy Bentham’s radical defence of queer lives against the backdrop of 18th- and 19th-century repression. Hear from Professor Judy Stephenson: an economic historian with a specialism in researching labour markets, institutions, firms, finance and industries in England and NW Europe between 1600 and 1850. Also in this documentary is Dr Xine Yao, Associate Professor in English and co-director of UCL’s Queer Studies network; qUCL.
Bentham, Romanticism and the ‘Cockney College’, featuring Professor Gregory Dart
Professor Gregory Dart is Professor of English at UCL. His first book was on the influence of the French Revolution upon English Romanticism, as mediated through Rousseau and the writings and speeches of Maximilien Robespierre. Professor Dart is also Chair of the Hazlitt Society and a member of the Lamb Society. In this episode, Professor Dart brings rich insights as he explores how ideas of Romanticism and Utilitarianism shaped the founding of UCL, or the ‘Cockney College’ as it was known at the time.
Queerness, Islam and the Left, featuring Dr Jonathan Galton
Dr Jonathan Galton recently completed a three-year postdoctoral research project at the IOE Social Research Institute, funded through a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, examining narratives of ‘Islamo-Leftism’, or the alliances between socialist politics and political Islam. In this episode, he shares his original research about the relationship between the British Left and Muslim communities, and discusses historical and contemporary relationships to homosexuality within Islam.
Queer Aesthetics and the Panoptic Gaze, featuring Dr Xine Yao
Dr Xine Yao is an Associate Professor in English and co-director of UCL’s Queer Studies network (qUCL). Her primary research focuses on early and nineteenth-century American literature through affect theory, critical race and ethnic studies, critical disability studies, and trans, feminist, and queer of colour theory. In this episode, Dr Yao draws on her extensive research into the radical politics of ‘unfeeling’ to investigate how not-feeling can be politically subversive.
The UK’s First Gaysoc, featuring Dr Luciano Rila
Dr Luciano Rila is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics. He sits on UCL’s LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group, and founded the LGBTQ+ STEM @UCL network. In this episode, Dr Rila recounts the unique story of the establishment of the first gaysoc affiliated to a student union in the UK, as well as the resulting backlash.
Nonbinary Gender in the Middle Ages: Recognising Wilgefortis, featuring Professor Bob Mills
Professor Bob Mills is Professor of Medieval Studies in the History of Art Department at UCL. Between 2015 and 2018 he directed qUCL, UCL’s LGBTQ+ research network. He has published articles on topics ranging from queer and trans approaches to the Middle Ages to queering museums and heritage. In this documentary, Professor Mills challenges the myth of a strictly binary Middle Ages, and the idea that gender diversity is a modern phenomenon.
Want to find out more? Season 2 of UCL Press Play is coming soon. Register below to be the first to hear when new episodes drop.